My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
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Written By: Moti Kupfer
Album review - My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
Release date - 4.11.91
Record company - Creation
Genre - Shoegaze / avant-rock / noise rock
In the early 2000s, the Norwegian band called "Kings of Convenience" released the album "Quiet Is the New Loud". It's not certain if this was the "Kings of Convenience"'s answer to what had happened a decade before them, but you can never know.
A decade before, noise and distortion alongside heavenly voices were the ones that became particularly popular thanks to the Irish band "My Bloody Valentine" and their groundbreaking second album "Loveless", which was released on 04.11.1991.
"My Bloody Valentine" was formed in Dublin, Ireland in 1983 by Kevin Shields (vocals, guitar, sampler), and Colm Ó Cíosóig (drums, sampler). Four years later, the full line-up was completed with the addition of Bilinda Butcher (vocals, guitar), and Debbie Googe (bass guitar).
In 1988, the band was signed by the record label "Creation" and towards the end of that year they released their first full-length album "Isn't Anything".
In all three years that passed until the next album, the band continued to work and record EPs, but there is no doubt that "Creation" did not believe that the next album by "MBV" would also be their last album with the company, and their last for more than twenty years.
From five days to almost two years! How does it happen that the recording of a studio album takes so long? They traveled through no fewer than nineteen recording engineers and recording studios, the band's inability to achieve the sound they were aiming for created a gap between what Alan McGee's Creation label was aiming for and what was available.
The end result was an album that defined the Shoegaze subgenre at its best. But it didn't help "My Bloody Valentine" stay signed to "Creation", as Alan McGee dumped them after the album cost him a quarter of a million pounds. "Creation" in the early nineties was a fairly small and poor indie label, the "MBV" adventure nearly cost "Creation" its bankruptcy, and cost band leader Kevin Shields his sanity, later on.
The sound that Kevin Shields, the band's leader, aimed for was a dirty, noisy sound on the one hand, and a live performance sound on the other. He combined aggression with tenderness, between cascades of distortion and angelic singing voices, between experimental and noisy sounds and simple, beautiful melodies.
Shields was greatly influenced by guitarists Johnny Ramone, Poison Ivy ("The Cramps"), Ron Asheton ("The Stooges"), and Bob Mould from the American punk rock band "Hüsker Dü". Through an interview with Bob Mould, he discovered Yamaha's Reverse Reverb pedal effect. An effect that takes the sound of one guitar and produces the sound of several guitars together, an expressive sound. That famous pedal would later define the music of "My Bloody Valentine" as "Shoegaze", since during live performance they would look down towards the pedal, which would create the illusion of looking towards their shoes to avoid interacting with the audience.
The loud sound of "My Bloody Valentine" was heavily influenced by bands like "Sonic Youth" and "Dinosaur Jr.", a sound that did not seek to flatter the listener. Unlike most of the world, he integrated the vocals into the mix along with the instruments and not above the instruments.
Similar to "Cocteau Twins," the lyrics on the album have less meaning, and they are mainly about relationships and sexuality. The singing style actually has meaning, and what's more, Shields and Butcher's vocals were recorded on two channels, one regular and one mumbled. In the mix, the two channels were combined together when the volume on the mumbled channel was turned up, creating a kind of mysterious and sweet ghost song.
In "Loveless," we get a lot of vague, heavy love. From the moment we press Play, we enter a state of thick fog that is actually a dream but right in the middle of reality.
On one album, Kevin Shields managed to bridge the mid-1980s noise-pop of "Jesus and Mary Chain" with the dream pop of the "Cocteau Twins", with his heavy use of that pedal creating a genre new for the British press, a genre they disparagingly called shoegaze. But, in the US it helped to brand shoegaze as a new and charming genre that later spawned bands like the "Smashing Pumpkins".
In real time, the album reached only number 24 on the UK album charts, selling only 100,000 copies. Can you call this a chart failure for an album that naturally wasn't aiming there? Not sure. What is certain is that it was "My Bloody Valentine's" swan song for many years.
For Listening: Apple Music