Review Summary: An album as viscous as pink maple syrup
Some people are remembered for one thing in particular¬–Gallagher smashed watermelons with a sledgehammer, Nixon had the Watergate scandal, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. Their lives or careers are summed up by a single event or phrase, as if filtered through a processor or scrubbed meticulously with a disinfectant that removes 99% of all their accomplishments, shortcomings, and identity, leaving the few pieces of his or her life deemed “worthy” by Time to remain peacefully intact.
Before 1991, My Bloody Valentine didn’t have a legacy. In the late 80s they were an underground band, playing sold out basements to crowds of rowdy teens who had nothing better to do on a Friday night then get loaded and catch some music that was as loud and rambunctious as they were. But as the decade of synthesizers and John Hughes came to a close and the 90s reared its head, the band’s newly found vitality and determination inspired them to do something different.
Loveless was created by nearly bankrupting the band’s record label, with the final product reaching a budget of nearly $360,000 U.S. dollars after all the studio tinkering was said and done. But the great thing about
Loveless is that it
sounds that massive.
From the first hits of the stale-sounding snare that segue into a riff that can best be described as a stampeding elephant on opener “Only Shallow”, this record sounds like it was hand-crafted and tinkered with for hours upon hours upon hours, like a fine Italian watch, its gears and cogs being examined at and played with until the numbers were evenly spaced and the hands ran as smooth as butter across the white sheik face.
You can only imagine the feeling that surged through the recording studio as the band sat down with producer and longtime roadie Guy Fixsen and listened to this album in its entirety the for the first time. The sense of accomplishment that ran through everyone's bodies, a feeling less monumental but arguably as strong as when Neil Armstrong took his first footsteps on the moon, peering out at the Earth and realizing that the long journey, despite being anxious, tedious, isolating, and novel, was all together worth it.
Sound was never used like that before, the way the feedback is distorted and altered and layered like an aural onion, one piece on top of the other¬–the drums sound distant, like they’re being pounded on from a mile away and the bass possesses a feeling of complete submersion.
Beneath those are the backbone of
Loveless, the cathartic sea of guitar that crashes with an innate ferocity and the angelic vocals of Bilinda Butcher, who, like Jons* from Sigur Rós or Thom Yorke from Radiohead, opts to use her voice as a supplement.
And it is during the best moments of
Loveless, like in the almost tribal-like percussion of closer “Soon” or the noise-pop of “When You Sleep”, that most pleasingly showcases Shields in sync with Butcher, the two creating an interesting dichotomy between ferociousness and beauty.
To the unwilling or conventional ear, most of these songs sound like pure noise. The hook from “Loomer” is lost among the angular and almost atonal riffing while “To Here Knows When”’s buzzsaw feedback and electronic flourishes bury Butcher’s voice so far underground that one might begin to question if those voices that he or she is hearing are nothing more than white noise that has been processed and pieced together to sound remotely human.
But isn’t there a certain beauty that reveals itself amidst chaos, a melody or rhythm that we create for ourselves when everything around us is collapsing that helps us get through the calamity?
Loveless is the night light that helps us sleep alone in the dark; it is an album that gives us this cacophony as a blank canvas so that we may find our own clarity within it.
So perhaps like Gallagher or Eli Whitney, My Bloody Valentine will be remembered in 50 years for their one thing, the band who created that one album back all those years ago that was so different and personal and adored, but ultimately shelved to collect dust by Time itself.
Given what
Loveless is, however, that just might be enough. That just might be O.K.
