m b v – My Bloody Valentine
In the umpteen years since Loveless was released, and in the umpteen-minus-two-or-three years since it was acclaimed as one of the top three or four albums to be released in the UK after 1980, and in the umpteen-minus-four-or-five years since it was used as the ignition spark for an entire generation (and then, grand-generation) of Shoegaze Spectaculars, the following things have happened to the original My Bloody Valentine audience, in rough chronological order:
1) they got grown up jobs
2) they got married and had kids
3) they bought better hi fi equipment
4) they bought or downloaded a shitload of other albums
4) they bought or downloaded a shitload of other albums
Which makes the task of recording, mastering and releasing a two-decades-late follow up to Loveless somewhat atypically challenging. Such a release probably has to closely approach or overtake the following goals to be considered successful:
1) it should consist of creative work of the same or better quality as Loveless
2) it should sound as good or better than Loveless on the equipment noted in #3 above
3) it should avoid sounding derivative of Loveless
4) it should avoid sounding like the work of some new band that shares only a name with My Bloody Valentine, good or no
This is an objective roughly similar to target-shooting a compound bow while downhill skiing. Which makes the first 20 seconds of track 1 “she found now” probably the most remarkable 20 seconds of music you are going to hear in 2013.
(To be fair, there are gifts of high stakes noted in those goals above: a better record than this with less backstory than this, by some other band, is not going to be quite as remarkable. And it is remarkable.)
I have no idea how old “she found now” actually is. Maybe it was written or even recorded a week or so after Loveless was wrapped. Maybe it was written last year. Maybe it was found in the center of some cracked-open three million year-old geode. All sound potentially true to me. The song, and with it the album, arrive with a lazy, internal-organ-vibrating rumble which, in the best MBV tradition, sounds equal parts organic and mechanical. It is at once disorienting and familiar, and the immediate effect upon the listener is the broad involuntary grin of Surprise Joy, beholding the Unexpected Yet Familiar and Adored.
This song has apparently been in all of us since the last notes of Loveless, for how familiar it feels. The guitar work is appropriately out of tune. The ocean-depths bass line fills all headphones everywhere with wonder. The vocals sound a lot like what you or I would try to start singing were we planted in front of a microphone with this glorious noise spilling from speakers all around us. There probably has never been a better example of comforting terror and beauty in indie rock. These first 20 seconds are one miracle, or a continuum of 20000 carefully spliced miracles. Either way, you are smiling.
The follow up tracks do not, obviously, share the same boondoggle Shock of Recognition as the first new My Bloody Valentine song in umpteen years, but they prosper nonetheless. “only tomorrow” revs up the breathy Lady Vocals while churning the same type of glowing magma guitar lines. Traditionally, this has been the type of exhale/pace-change that makes boy listeners starting thinking lewd thoughts about the Lady Band Member or, sometimes, any proximate lovely woman.
The effect still holds.
To track 3 “who sees you” we float, and indeed this is an incrementally less heavy number. Again, in the MBV tradition, this barely-softer melody feels a little bit like reward, release or recovery, which after the drunken pummeling of the prior tracks also feels a little bit like Total Bliss. The calculus of attack/bludgeon/release/recover does not feel far removed from that of Loveless, and the technique, or maybe just the memory of the technique, remains beloved.
“is this and yes,” and “if I am,” featuring ethereal helpings of organ, convey in their space-orbits the album’s, and band’s, greatest departures from form. This is all-blessing, no-curse, and the album is richer for the fun change in instrumentation. After a career of terra and sub-terra songs, the band allows both of these tracks to spin wildly through the stars.
Finally, and most unexpectedly, “new you” arrives and Is found to share a great deal of the recessive genes that made “Soon” one of Loveless’ signature tracks: it reiterates the belief that getting a dance groove to hold hands with a wall of sound undoubtedly makes the world a better place for everyone.
These songs seem a hundred miles deep: constructed of sedimentary layers that arrived throughout the years of Kevin Shieds’ glacial work pace. Grindingly slow, immense, gorgeous: this is life-force stuff.
“mbv” is not derivative of earlier output from the band; nor does it sound like any other band in the history of music. With the clear exception of “new you,” the album is difficult to imagine listening to while driving to work, or while making dinner, or while hosting a social event. Beyond riding in an airplane or sitting with a pair of headphones in a dimly-lit room, it is difficult to populate a list of activities one could enjoy while playing the album. (I wouldn’t even include “sex” on the “mbv-compatible activity" list, which is pretty rare indeed for a shoegazery album.) There are, of course, no center-stage lyrics to perseverate upon or instrument cameos to mentally bookmark. All there is, is a perpetual, glorious unwinding of the types of lovingly-constructed and painstakingly-whittled music that hasn’t introduced itself to all of us since, uh, Loveless.
The majority of the downsides to the album are structural and intentional, which are always the best kinds of downsides—because they aren’t actually mistakes. Lyrics, such as they are, seem involuntary and expressed more than sung or communicated; moreover, the album as a whole, like Loveless, is rather daunting to consider as a single-serving. Like saffron, or green olives, or truffles, the impact of m b v is probably best distributed as spare ingredients in a playlist. Oh, and the repetitive, you-don’t-deserve-a-chorus propulsive torture of “nothing is” just kind of sucks.
Altogether: an unexpected and probably undeserved triumph. Updike, corrected: gods do answer letters.
Keeper tracks: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9
February 2013
