Best Song on "Loveless"

xpost, only difference is that it starts without any blend in from the interstitial. Other than those couple seconds, they're identical.

i am listening to the mp3 (too lazy to check the cd) of when you sleep. at 0:42 just after he sings "once in a while" (i think he says "then" at that exact point) there is a fault on it. it sounds like the noise of a crinkled tape. is it my mp3 or is it a flaw in the production?

xpost: that's what I thought! (I thought I posted this five minutes ago, but it seems to have vanished into the void, unless I posted it in some other random thread)

"when you sleep" pwns handily

to here knows when and come in alone have always been my least favourite songs on loveless. it's not only that the former sounds totally muddy. i don't like the melody at all. too one-dimensional or something. it doesn't help that the song is extremely repetitive. the calm drone of the last thirty seconds though is bliss. especially when they fade into when you sleep. after all that fog, the sun is piercing through the clouds finally!

I know plenty of huge MBV fans love "Soon", but I can't help but think of it as the song for people that don't actually like MBV that much. Personally, I think it's one of the weakest songs on the album.

Haha, tell it to Ned.

and me for that matter.

Greatest song and greatest band ever for me.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

It's just that "Soon" is one of the few songs on Loveless that isn't timeless. You could play it for someone who had never heard MBV, ask them to guess the release date, and I'm sure most people would get pretty close. It screams out 1991. Whereas, a song like "To Here Knows When"...that will always sound contemporary, I think.

Someone interrupt me with a massive fart noise, please.

the song for people that don't actually like MBV that much.

well isn't Loveless essentially the album analogue to this?

I dont know if I can vote in this poll. "When You Sleep" might get my vote but it'd be like favouring a child. I dont think I can do it.

And yes, I realize that if you play "She Loves You" for someone who had never heard it, they could probably guess within a few years the release date of that well, and it doesn't detract from the song at all. But the difference with that, maybe, is that the rest of The Beatles Second Album and it fits in aesthetically, while the majority of Loveless sounds otherworldly and "Soon" sort of sticks out like a sore thumb (to me, at least).

I'm going to blame the gaps in that last post on my broken keyboard, and suggest that it reads better if you get hit in the head by a basketball in the middle of the second sentence.

Soon does sound tacked on. I mean I love the song, it is sexy to dance to, but it wasnt part of the album conceptually was it?

"When You Sleep" is definitely the one that sucked me in. So that one.

I think the album could stand just fine if it were just 8 minutes of the end of "What You Want" instead of "Soon." But then "I Only Said" wouldn't have an analogous track on the B-side!!

"Soon" revisionism!

I still like "Soon"!

Only Shallow is my pick.

Ooooh, yeah, 8 additional minutes of "What you Want", which was my choice for this poll, incidentally, would be heavenly, especially as a closer! Not even 8 additional verse-bridge-chorus minutes, just 8 minutes of instrumental chorus...

http://www.johnsadowski.com/uploaded_images/doggie_heaven-767087.jpg

I like the version of "Soon" off the Glider EP more than the Loveless version, it has a better intro.

blown a wish holla

whoever said sometimes was the worst should be in jail

i would rather go to jail than ever listen to that pathetic, dying alley cat croak of a song again.

;-D

There is no "worst" song on this record. Those who think otherwise oppose freedom. :)

Soon does sound tacked on. I mean I love the song, it is sexy to dance to, but it wasnt part of the album conceptually was it?

It is very much part of the album conceptually. It's what the entire album has been building towards - a more conventional song-sound that makes you question the impulse of all that's come before. And MBV are questioning it too. The very end of the track is about itself, is about hearing "Soon." "Soon" is where we try to determine the worth of Loveless.

P.S. I had no clue the "Soon" on Glider was different. YSI?

at 0:42 just after he sings "once in a while" (i think he says "then" at that exact point) there is a fault on it. it sounds like the noise of a crinkled tape. is it my mp3 or is it a flaw in the production?

Prolly your mp3. Just played it on the CD and I don't hear it.

How is the very end of "Soon" about hearing "Soon"?

Yeah I cant parse that I'm afraid.

Because it sounds as if the song is starting over but in another version, a demo maybe, or heard from another room. As Ned Raggett says, "It always felt like a song that's endlessly playing somewhere out there, and we just got a fragment that crashed out of the sky, just a taste, no more." But then we're forced to ask: why this fragment? Why this version? So I should amend what I said above to read: it makes you question IF this is what the album has been building towards all along.

And then it throws you back onto the rest Loveless with similar questions. Is this a fragment too? Why this version? And, most significantly, what else is there? Because in a sense, that's what we've been asking since 1991. Perhaps we were doomed to never hear another My Bloody Valentine album.

Oh, I see what part you mean now. That little hiccup of loops at the end.

It's just that "Soon" is one of the few songs on Loveless that isn't timeless. You could play it for someone who had never heard MBV, ask them to guess the release date, and I'm sure most people would get pretty close. It screams out 1991.

It came out in 1990, about 18 months before Loveless.

"Soon" isn't timeless?
I say nar.

Maybe this is the place to say it: I never really understood Loveless at all. I've tried it dozens of times and it never worked for me. (Also: I don't get Pavement. :(

fair do. pavement are rubbish.

I'd vote for something off the 'Tremolo' EP if I could.

you can. to here knows when was the lead track on that. vote for it. everyone else has.

I'd probably go with 'Swallow'

I heart I Only Said. That riff/loop is ambient Rembrant.

curse you all. i'm relistening now when i should be making my bloody podcast.

What you want. What I want? Is it? Yes.

Alright, I'm gonna go with "When You Sleep"

"loomer"!

at last, someone agrees with me!

I think I'm gonna say "Blown A Wish." Maybe. Arrrrgh now I'm thinking "When You Sleep."

"Sometimes", and not least b/c of its astonishing role in Lost In Translation.

OK I ended up going for "What you Want" (just pipped "When you Sleep") because there's something about the way Kevin sings it that tugs my heartstrings and makes me feel really awesome.

no ned on this thread no credibility! it's almost spooky...

Soon is actually a different mix on the EP according to Shields, iirc.

Soon is the obvious choice, and THKW too, but I also adore Only Shallow - magnificent opener, one of the all-time greats.

despite, i always have this really corny image of a jeep trailblazing it's way through some african desert when this song plays. it's especially unfortunate b/c despite loveless being my favorite album, i associate no other images with any other songs. no help that matthew mcconnaughey is occasionally in the jeep.

You're an odd boy.

would've voted loomer i think, dunno why but that "pretty boys with their sunshine faces carrying their heads down" is the 'eye of the duck' moment of the album, for me

Eye of the duck?

'i only said' is my personal highlight whenever listening to loveless, i like the relentlessness of it

To Here Knows When, pretty easily. Soon is awful.

I don't mean to be rude, it's such a dull track

You're crazy.

And dull is a useless criticism unless quantified.

"Lynch claims that he tries to put in an “eye of the duck” scene in each of his movies. This is a scene that isn’t necessarily essential to the plot, but is absolutely essential to the artistic effect of the movie."

it's like looking into the eye of a duck and sucking all the fluid from its beak

I can get with the eye of the duck. We should have a thread about eye of the duck moments in culture.

I always thought "To Here Knows When" was the track that defines the album. Can't believe it's number 5...

I feel the same way about "I Only Said".

Would have voted for 'To Here Knows When' - beautiful, overwhelming noise.

come in alone was robbed!

+1

some of the gnarliest bass tone i've ever heard

No offense to Only Shallow/Loomer/Touched, but THKW is,basically when the album really hits its stride. Even though it does get a little samey, I still love the back half more than the front.

THK

er, THKW wouldve been my vote when this poll was active but now its all about What You Want

1. I Only Said
2. Only Shallow
3. Soon
4. Come in Alone
5. To Here Knows When
6. Blown a Wish
7. Loomer
8. Sometimes
9. What You Want
10. When You Sleep
11. Touch
TOUCH

"Soon" sounds to me like the lost cousin of "Once in a lifetime"