Review: My Bloody Valentine - mbv
Where?
Where does one even begin when attempting to write about the
unprecedented third album by My Bloody Valentine?
Do you begin with the near mythological backstory
surrounding the 20+ years that passed between the release of 1991’s Loveless and now? What details of the
story are even true? Did Loveless
bankrupt Creation Records, their label at the time? Did frontman Kevin Shields
pretty much lose his mind through a better part of the late 1990s? Or, the
question everybody would certainly like a straight answer to—why did it take
over 20 years to release a follow up?
The mere idea of a follow up to Loveless became somewhat of a music industry punch line for
years—the same way that Chinese Democracy
and Detox were (and still are)
punch lines. The same way that we are all still waiting for D’Angelo to release
his third album—but D has only kept us waiting for like 12 years.
For the last six or seven years, there have been faint
rumblings of a third MBV album—rumblings that Kevin Shields never really
stopped working on new music, and that music the band apparently recorded in
the mid-90s sounded better than he remembered it being. There are the band’s
occasional bursts of “reunion” shows in various European countries. There were
the much-delayed reissues of their first two albums, as well as a compilation
of EP tracks. There were the breadcrumbs left by Shields in interviews, saying
the band was working on new material. And that they could have a record out by
the end of 2012.
On the day the world was supposed to end, December 21st,
2012, My Bloody Valentine announced via Facebook that they had finished
mastering their new album. December ended, January began. No new album. During
a warm-up live show, to shut up a heckler asking about the new record, Shields
said to the audience that it would be out in “maybe two or three days.” That
was on Sunday, January 27th.”
The Internet was ablaze with rumors. Two and three days
passed. No sign. Then, Saturday, February 2nd—again via Facebook, it
was announced that the album was going to be released that very night via their
newly redesigned website. 6:00p CST, the website went live, and proceeded to
crash. And oh how it crashed. Eventually by 8:30 or 9p, the server issues had
been worked out, and people were actually able to pay money in exchange for a
record they thought would never come out.
A band like My Bloody Valentine doesn’t seem like they are
built for 2013. The entire way music is distributed and the way artists
interact with their fans have changed so dramatically in 20 years. For a band
that basically started a fucking genre, it doesn’t seem like they should be
announcing their album release via social media. But in 2013, that is how you
get things done.
(they were so dreamy)
On Twitter, while waiting for their server issues to be
corrected, #mbv was a national trend. One tweet said something to the extent of
“an album we’ve waited over 20 years to hear shouldn’t be first listened to via
mp3s.” Again, in 2013, this is how you do things. Kevin Shields, a beyond notorious
audio perfectionist, probably cringed at the idea of people first hearing his
record in a compressed 320k format. But to the average person who only buys
music via iTunes, and only listens to music via an iPod, they have no idea what
they are actually missing between a digital format and true audio fidelity from
a vinyl LP or even a compact disc.
As I opened my acquired zip file, with a folder of mp3s
named “MBV,” and placed it into my iTunes library, hitting play on the first
song, it still didn’t seem real to me. Like the actual concept of this record
existing in the physical world was too much to comprehend.
The name of the third My Bloody Valentine album is mbv. Yes, all lower case. And the song
titles are also all lower case. It is nine songs long, and clocks in at around
47 minutes. Since the physical product won’t ship out until the end of
February—it’s available in a limited edition LP/CD set, as well as standard
CD—you are left with nine mp3s and no liner notes. But who is to say there will
even be liner notes once my actual record arrives in the mail? This is a band
that couldn’t even be bothered to write up something for the 20th
anniversary reissue of Loveless.
mbv is a
transcendental album. There is no telling when this material was written or
even recorded. This could be music from the scrapped mid-90s sessions, or this
all could have been recorded in 2012. Would I say that it sounds “timeless?”
Maybe. Would I say that it also harkens back to the sound they defined in 1991.
Definitely. There are songs on this record that would fit in very well with
their Loveless-era material,
specifically the song “new you.”
In a somewhat-recent interview, Kevin Shields claimed people
who had heard this material thought it was “stranger” than Loveless. I guess to my ears, the sound of Loveless is commonplace, so this collection came off as being the
next logical step for a band that has decided to move forward after a 20 year
hiatus. There are hints of their post-punk past, there are obviously elements
of Loveless, and then there are
completely new ideas.
mbv is a big
record. It sounds expensive. And it sounds gigantic. On my first listen, I sat
on the floor of my living room, headphones plugged into my laptop, watching my
companion rabbits hop around the living room, while my wife worked on designing
a website in the dining room, oblivious to what was occurring within my
headphones. There were times where my eyes grew wide at what I was hearing.
Listening to this for the first time, I suppose, is like being a young child on
Christmas morning.
The mixing on Loveless
has become the standard for what “shoegaze” is considered to sound like—the
guitars are loud as fuck, the vocals are mixed low and sound unintelligible,
and everything else gets packed in between. The mixing on mbv is completely different. It is, for lack of a better word,
robust. Each song overtakes your headphones completely. You can almost hear 20
years worth of perfectionism in every note on the record.
Both their debut full length Isn’t Anything and Loveless begin
with a sequence of snare drum hits. However, this record begins with a guitar
crunch that sounds like it is a direct continuation of the song “Sometimes.”
“she found now” is a slow burning opening track of fuzzy guitar shoegaze glory.
It also features somewhat alarmingly clear vocals from Shields himself. Even
more alarming is the second track on the album, “only tomorrow.” It’s a song
mixed so well, it humanizes the band—meaning that even though it’s common
knowledge Shields did most of the instrumentation himself, you can hear
distinction between guitars, bass, and drums, along with Belinda Butcher’s
ethereal vocals—it’s easy to imagine four people making this song occur.
The first three songs on this album are near flawless—the
third song, “who sees you,” continues to push in a “we sound like a band”
direction, as well as harkening back to Loveless
with an otherworldly distended guitar buzz throughout the song. When the song
comes to a sudden end, an interesting thing happens. When you hear the final
guitar screech stop, you can actually hear studio noise for a brief moment.
Reminding you again, that real people are responsible for this music.
The album’s fourth track takes an interesting turn into
keyboard city. “is this and yes,” I hate to say it, could be written off as a
bit of a clunker. It is certainly a step backwards from the momentum gathered
by the first three songs. It’s by no means awful, but it seems out of
place—like it was recorded by a different band, like it’s a demo track, or a
b-side. Synth pulses beep and boop for like five minutes, while Belinda
Butcher’s voice floats wordlessly over the top of them.
Thankfully things pick up, and fascinatingly so, at the
halfway point with “if I am.” A very percussive heavy song, powered by what I
imagine to be usage of a wah pedal on the guitar. Not like 1970s funk kind of
wah. Wah that creates textural waves of sound. As with a majority of this
record, the mixing is breathtaking—everything you hear has a direct impact on you.
As mentioned earlier, the song “new you,” that effectively
starts the second half of the album, is a direct continuation of the final song
from Loveless, “Soon.” It features a
very similar groove, along with a very dreamy tremolo effect on the guitar and
some very 90s elements in the production—the slight flange drums leads one to
believe that this was maybe recorded during the scrapped mid-90s sessions.
mbv is sequenced
in a way (save for track four) that is sectioned up by feeling, and really
builds towards something. What it builds towards is the final three songs on
the record—all of which lead to a reaction of “holy shit.” Among many of the
rumors circulating about My Bloody Valentine is that at some point in the 90s,
a heavily influenced by drum and bass record was recorded and then subsequently
scrapped. This influence, either intentional or not, hangs over the final three
songs on the album.
“in another way,” is, dare I say, triumphant sounding. This
is the kind of song that can barely be contained within the confines of your
headphones—I can’t even fathom what hearing this song performed live would be
like. I just imagine it would be an ocean of bodies, jumping up and down,
collectively losing their shit for five minutes. The drums are beyond huge; the
guitars alternate between an almost deafening yet catchy squall, and a heavily
compressed and aggressive crunch.
The song ends somewhat suddenly, and there’s only a brief
pause before “nothing is” begins. And Jesus Christ. This song is fucking
relentless. Three minutes of pounding drums and buzz saw guitars, over and over
again. The song sounds like it wants to explode and destroy whatever device you
are listening to it on, and it seems like throughout, parts of it get ever so
slightly louder, until it all just stops, and the drum loops flickers out into
nothingness.
The final track on the album is “wonder 2.” The beginning
has the most obvious drum and bass element—it’s based around a reversed sample
of your stereotypical beat from any 1997-era club banger. It’s so distorted
though that it sounds like it’s an airplane taking off inside of your brain.
Then comes the onslaught of guitars. And then comes the vocals. Then comes the
same drum sample, only played forward instead of in reverse. To say that almost
too much is happening on “wonder 2”
is an understatement. I imagine that traveling at the speed of light after
smoking crack is similar to listening to this song. It is, without a doubt, one
of the most bat shit insane things I have ever heard.
And then it’s done. All the noise stops, both directions of
samples come to a close and echo into the distance. And if you’ve been
listening to mbv from start to
finish, after it’s over, your ears should be ringing. And if you’ve been
listening from start to finish, when it’s over, your first instinct is to start
it all over again.
(not as dreamy/not built for 2013)
Given all of the hype leading up to this album actually
being released—expectations were, you know, high. If someone was expecting Loveless Part Two: This Time Its Gazier,
they may be disappointed. But it is truthfully a mistake going into an album
like this with any preconceived notions. After 20 years, and after creating an
album that started a genre, and spawned a million copy-cats, and is considered
to be one of the greatest records OF ALL TIME, how do you top it?
The thing is, you don’t. You don’t top it at all. You take a
step back (in this case, a step back meaning 20 years) and you find what the
next logical step forward is. How will music history remember mbv? As simply “the third album by My
Bloody Valentine?” As an album that broke the internet?
In the end, it doesn’t matter if these songs were record in the
90s, or in November of 2012, or how it will be remembered 20 years from now.
What matter is that this is what happens after Loveless. This is what My Bloody Valentine sound like in 2013.
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