Listening To Loveless For The First Time

Last year, while killing time before a Spiritualized show, I confessed to a friend of mine that I had never heard anything by My Bloody Valentine. Well, it really wasn’t a confession, as I’ve never lied about it before – the subject’s never really come up. I guess I felt like calling it a confession because My Bloody Valentine are one of those bands that it’s pretty much assumed everyone has listened to at some point during the early days of their indie-hipster-fuck adolescence.

But my indie-hipster-fuck adolescence was different than the indie-hipster-fuck adoloscence of most people my age (32). For one thing, I didn’t even begin paying attention to music until 1994, so I just missed out on all the shoegazey crap that occupied the pages of Melody Maker and NME before Britpop came around. Since my preference is to seek out new music instead of going backwards, I’ve missed out on a lot of so-called classic albums and bands from that time, with My Bloody Valentine and Loveless being chief among them.

Last week, Popmatters published a review of a remastered edition of Loveless. At the bottom of the review – as has been their custom lately – was an embed through Lala of the entire album. Seeing as I now had the album right in front of me, I decided that it was time to go ahead and give it a listen.

One thing: this was done at work. For some reason, there is only one speaker on my work computer (the mighty Dell Optiplex GX270) and it’s located on the back of the desktop. Also, the desktop is set on the floor. As a result of it’s location and the fact that it’s a pretty crappy speaker, the sound quality for anything that is played through it leaves much to be desired. This is, of course, a perfect way to give a first listen to an album that is widely heralded for its sonic nuances.

So here are my track-by-track thoughts upon hearing an album that everybody tells me I should have heard 18 years ago.

1) Only Shallow – A couple drum hits and off we go. I can’t understand any of the lyrics, so I’ll just say that the girl is singing about penguins. The song structure is simply skronk/verse/skronk/verse/skronk/verse/skronk, followed by completely unnecessary ambient nothingness for 30 seconds. Not very revolutionary so far. It’s just the first song, though – they’re setting the tone, I assume, for the tit-tacular awesomeness that is to come.

By the way, this is the first result that pops up after an image search of My Bloody Valentine on Yahoo:

shoulda gone with google

2) Loomer – So does the Kevin dude sing at all (yes, I’ve already forgotten his last name, even though I just need to scroll up on the Popmatters page to see it)? I always thought he was the singer. Shit, maybe he is singing but he sounds like a girl, kinda like the Sigur Ros dude. Maybe he’s just too busy shredding to be bothered with singing. This song is doing absolutely nothing for me – same skronk/verse structure as the last song only shorter – and it’s totally not about someone who uses a loom. Very disappointing.

you probably thought this song was about you

3) Touched – An unnecessary instrumental. Already? This better be setting things up for an epic 4th song or I’m bailing on this.

I wrote a song called “Loveless” once. It’s not that great, but it has a nice counter-melody after the second chorus. Give it a listen:

Paris Street – Loveless

4) To Here Knows When – Again, I have no idea what the girl is singing about. I guess it’s not supposed to matter with this type of band, so I’ll pretend she’s singing about the Itaipu dam in Paraguay.

even hydroelectric plants need love

And penguins. Because, until I can gather a cohesive lyric, I’m gonna make this a concept album about penguins. For this song, the penguin is looking for his true love, but she lies on the other side of the Itaipu dam. What will he do? This one just keeps on going, doesn’t it? After about two and a half minutes, the last two chords of the song just repeat and repeat. And, oh look, a completely unnecessary ambient outro that makes the song a minute longer than it needs to be. How novel. With every passing song, I grow gladder and gladder that I never listened to any shoegaze.

5) When You Sleep – This one is immediately my favorite of the ones I’ve heard so far. The keyboard part does the trick. Or maybe it was done on guitar – you know, cos the guy’s a genius and can make guitar noises that sound like a keyboard. Like Tom Morello. You remember that one Rage Against The Machine album where they put a note saying that no keyboard effects were used on the record? They really wanted to emphasize that all the keyboard-like sounds were made through the guitar-playing genius of Tom Morello. God, what a bunch of pricks.

There’s a dude singing now with the chick. Is it Kevin or someone else? Do I care? Not at all – I’m digging this one. I’ll stop typing now and give it a listen, only resuming my typing once the obligatory unnecessary ambient outro begins . . . . . . . . . . . . and it only lasted about 10 seconds this time, which is tolerable. That was a fucking fine song. And you thought I was gonna be snarky the whole time.

The Loveless Cafe is about 10 miles away from my house. Their biscuits are amazing.

and i don’t even like biscuits

6) I Only Said – Kinda like the last song but instead of opening with a swell keyboard melody, they go with the skronky disorientation of the first two songs. Pointless instrumental aside, the structure for all of these songs has been exactly the same. I could use a ‘Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)’ break right around now just to change the mood.

That was totally necessary.

7) Come in Alone – The intro sounds exactly like the beginning of ‘Sand on Fire’ by Kitchens of Distinction (making this the first blog to ever reference Kitchens of Distinction). What a fucking rip-off! I can’t believe that . . . oh wait, ‘Sand on Fire’ came out three years after this. My bad. I heard a lyric – second verse – “you will see . . .”. See what? The penguin’s true love? Did he ever manage to cross the dam? I should probably try to pay better attention to the song. This one was pretty good too, though now I really want to listen to Kitchens of Distinction. Let’s do it together!

Kitchens of Distinction – Sand on Fire

8) Sometimes – Finally, a song with a slightly different structure. It’s not much different, though. The gal’s not singing this one – she might have gotten sick of singing about pengu- oh wait, she’s back. Or is that a keyboard? Damn this speaker! This song is going absolutely nowhere – keeping the same structure in every song might not have been so bad. The keyboard part is helping a little bit. Maybe that’s my problem with this album – I’m much more attuned to nice keyboard playing that I am to anything that anybody does on a guitar. I’d probably enjoy this more if my tastes were the other way around.

The first result that comes up after a regular Yahoo search for “loveless” is a Wikipedia link for a Japanese manga. I am now picturing the members of My Bloody Valentine with anime eyes. This might make the listening experience more enjoyable.

my bloody valentine

9) Blown A Wish – Ah, back to what works. Whoah – they’ve got like backwards shit going on and shit. These guys are geniuses! Again, not a bad song. It’s no surprise, but I’m favoring all the poppy stuff up to this point. Two more to go!

it’s almost over, buddy!

10) What You Want – These guys are really bad with song titles. I wonder what a non-remastered (which i guess would be called ‘mastered’) version of this album would sound like through my computer’s speaker? Oh my – this is the longest unnecessary ambient outro yet. it just keeps going. This is time I could have spent listening to the last song and getting this over with.

11) Soon – And it continues into the next song. Great. This one’s not bad so far – some flute-like sound, a bit of a baggy beat, and the last breathy sighs about the penguin. I hope he’s found a fish-filled life with his loved one. It’s pretty repetitive, but the beat and the flute-ish melody (sounds like the same one from the 4th song) keeps things engaging. At 7 minutes, this is the longest song on the album – it could have been a couple minutes shorter. For some reason, I thought they had longer songs. Maybe that’s the case on their other album. Oh well – this one’s over, which means the album’s over. Which means I’m done.

First impression: a big of a shrug. I liked three of the songs, thought that one or two others were okay, and didn’t care for the rest (especially the first four songs – even more especially, that instrumental, which was truly pointless). As I usually do, I’ll observe my Ryan Adams Rule and give it at least another listen before I make up my mind about it. I’ll try to do it at home, through better speakers. Maybe it will make a difference. Maybe not.

This was fun to write. I hope it’s been fun to read. Have a great weekend.
The Opening Acts
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This entry was posted on Friday, March 20th, 2009 at 4:10 am and is filed under fantastic awesomeness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Comments

  1. Darrin says:
    March 20, 2009 at 4:53 am

    Even though you’re dead wrong, this is the most entertaining album review I’ve ever read.

  2. Tyge says:
    March 22, 2009 at 12:04 am

    I second Darrin’s comment and like you, have never listened to MBV… although they’ve been suggested. I’ll wait til the Ryan Adams Rule takes its course.

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