Loveless by My Bloody Valentine
It's an appropriate cover, the image all overlapped and confused, saturated by reds and looking all messy and bunched up, as if there's a lack of space to be had. Certainly,
My Bloody Valentine fill up their entire sonic landscape and then need to overlap in some places, because goddammit there isn't enough room. There's a certain aesthetic to the image that cannot be denied, a certain mood that's evoked in those who've listened to
Loveless, yet maybe it's more appropriate to say those who've explored and fallen into
Loveless. The overlapping is fitting, and may be a subtle hint to those who know it, because this is an album rife with the touch of overdubbing and reverb. The whole thing echoes and bounces around inside your head, looking for somewhere to go, looking for a category fit snugly into. When I first heard it, I didn't know where to put it, so I put it in my "What?" folder inside my mind. A beautiful what.
Love it or hate it(and to be honest, most people I've met either love it or at least respect it), nobody had ever quite heard an album like this. Shoegazing at it's worst was a pretentious scene. Hell, it was called shoegazing because the performers looked down at their shoes while they played. This complete lack of showmanship isn't a new thing in today's underground scenes, but one should at least look at their audience, at least in my opinion, and I'll muster up the arrogance to say I'm correct on that account. This album had a real risk of becoming an unintentional self-parody, and the band feared a critical panning of the first degree. Instead they got rave reviews and rightly so. A perfect word for
Loveless is transcendent. It escapes the shackles of genre and firmly places itself into the essential.
There are a few songs that stand out and are of note.
'Loomer', the second song, is one of only two songs on the album that I feel are carried by the vocals. Yet they're still mostly indistinguishable, especially in
'Loomer'. The vocals in this song are a sweetly sad melody that are backed up by a howling guitar that reeks of desperation. It's the perfect counterpoint to the brash assault laid at one's feet in the opener. The next song of note is
'I Only Said', a dense soundscape invaded by a sliver of high-pitched beauty snaking up and down through the song like a leech swimming in water. It stays with you, makes you want to move and is unexpectedly catchy. It's a song you want on repeat. The last notable song is a tender piece on a deceptively tender album(many may consider it a loud album, but in it's finest moments it's a subtle and moving waltz that stays with you), called
'Sometimes'. The guitar sounds tired, yet still menacing, still capable of assault, but it's pushed to the background, and the vocals guide the song with a steady hand. It's a song of regret it seems, sad and sweet like the best brand of nostalgia should be.
The density of this album is astounding. Voice and lyrics are indistinguishable from the greater whole. The vocals are used as just another instrument, one more ingredient blended into the crammed minutes of every song. A provider of a base melody, a foundation leaving room for bloom. To be honest, don't bother looking up the lyrics, I haven't, and whenever I review an album I always look up the lyrics. There are only two songs with distinguishable lyrics, but the most intriguing ones I heard were in the second song,
'Loomer', because there was one phrase that got to me, especially in my current state of mind,
'lonely places.' Lonely places. An appropriate album. Ever seen the Fellini film
'La Strada'? There's a scene with a woman inside a circus tent, all alone, playing a violin, cigarette in her mouth, and the smoke rises ever so slowly, curling upwards towards the sun, unwitnessed. Lonely places. I'd say the stage is one of those places, but that's just the poet in me talking.
10/10