Music Banter - View Single Post - The Ultimate Hipster Playlist / Good Albums that Suck Because You Exist

lucifer_sam · 10-13-2008, 05:55 PM

If there’s one thing I hate more than bands that burn out after their masterpiece is come, it’s bands that don’t even try to make a shittier album.

7. My Bloody Valentine - Loveless (1991)

What can be said about Loveless that hasn’t been said before?

Not much. It’s a fantastic album – sonically, aesthetically, whatever. Loveless broke boundaries upon its inception, and may have been one of the best records of the 1990s, easily beating out the shit that got over-hyped later on. The lyrics were excellent (albeit rarely heard). The pseudo-distorted guitar is charming at times and apocalyptic at others. Kevin Shields really was at his best then – composing an album which would have taken lesser musicians a much shorter time to complete. It’s flawless from start to finish, and there aren’t too many alternative albums that could claim such an astronomical feat.

That’s why I hate it.

For a band that professed to be “alternative” (which I always imagined to require minimal production effort), My Bloody Valentine fucking did a number on our heads. Two years and a quarter million quid went into the album, as Shields fired and fucked with assistants and engineers. Scores of studios and hundreds of people on payroll later, and Kevin Shields churned out this amalgamation of sounds. But at least he kept the production to a minimum:

Quote:

Shields aimed to use "very simple minimal effects" which often were the result of involved studio work. He stated, "The songs are really simply structured. A lot of them are purposely like that. That way you can get away with a lot more when you mess around with the contents".[17] In a 1992 Guitar World interview, Shields described how he achieved a sound akin to a wah-wah pedal on "I Only Said" by playing his guitar through an amplifier with a graphic equaliser preamp. After recording the track, he then bounced it to another track through a parametric equaliser while he adjusted the EQ levels manually. The interviewer asked if Shields could have achieved the same effect easier by simply using a wah-wah pedal, to which the guitarist replied, "In attitude toward sound, yes. But not in approach."[19]

And after Loveless was heralded as the greatest thing since sliced bread, Shields made sure it stayed that way. He wasn’t going to fuck up Loveless by making another album. Ever.

…

..

.