My Bloody Valentine - Loveless

Come on, you know Loveless. I honestly can’t remember where I picked this disc up. Of the big three British acts of 90s shoegaze, I’ve always been the biggest fan of Ride, and enjoyed Slowdive well enough, but for whatever reason My Bloody Valentine never stuck with me when I listened to them in high school and college. At that point, shoegaze was a wikipedia article, some /mu/ threads, and a few youtube video essays to me, not a major underground genre in the US. It was abstract. And sure, you can argue that the current acts have way more nor-cal influence (Deftones, Whirr, Deafheaven) than they do anglophilia, but Loveless has remained a greatest-of-all-time contender on critics’ lists for as long as I’ve been alive. This is, in a weird way, the defining document of shoegaze.

It’s therefore very interesting to see what sticks out about this album compared to the legions of bands who claim to be inspired by it. For one, there’s not a lot of reverb on the album. A decent bit of faux-room on the drum samples, a tiny amount of it on the synths and vocals, and none on the guitar. I say guitar and not guitars because it’s also surprisingly sparing with how little double-tracking there is on the guitar, especially compared with the breathy and wistful vocals. He’s doing a lot of stuff that sounds like it could be direct-to-amp with his signature (and deliciously arrogant) “glide guitar”. Also, the lyrics are more lovey than I expected! A lot of modern shoegaze takes the emo route and sings about friendship and love lost, taking the wistful and yearning quality of the music and matching it in the lyrics, but My Bloody Valentine is opting for (at least a little) contrast, singing about more hookups than hangups. There’s also way more synth going on, providing bubbling counterpoint for the smooth, sedated vocals and guitars.

I have it on CD, and there’s a few streaks on the clear jewel case but not too many. It’s kind of funny to see the cropped black and white Warner records logo on the back when Sire, Creation, and AAD are willing to fade into the magenta color scheme gracefully. I’m a sucker for monochrome + negative CD designs where you can see the original silver peeking through a printed design, and this disc is beautiful. The hazy magenta cover art and CD art are perfectly matched to the music. I thought it was lazy of them to have the inner page and the back page of the CD booklet be essentially the same, but that’s my only real critique.

This was originally going to be the part where I cut the album down to size. It never clicked with me before. The album didn’t inspire any strong feelings in the foreground like Nowhere, and didn’t feel as good to have on in the background as Souvlaki Space Station. Its reputation made it somewhat impenetrable and I felt almost guilty for being unable to crack its shell. But then I listened to it again and again and started to make sense of the floating poplar-fluff melodies and meticulously messy production. Sitting in that borderland between paying attention and not, bravely sequenced (putting the midi-timpani instrumental “touched” third!), and with a couple of attention grabbers in “come in alone” and “only shallow” to keep it from floating off into the abyss, this is a good time of an album. I might not put it as high on the rankings as some people, but I’ll be reaching for it again sooner rather than later.

Loveless by My Bloody Valentine is a good album, and I like it.