The Return Of My Bloody Valentine

Ok - I can't go through the whole thread... have the ppl who've heard this actually BOUGHT it from the website or got it by other means? Cos I got as far as entering my card details but they can't be processed... Which is better than last night, but still.

Website's working just fine now... Although I used paypal.

^same here

Ok, I see a few ppl are having trouble with card payment. PayPal it is.

tho admittedly i'm distracted by the datedness of the Squarepusher drum track on Wonder 2, it certainly functions well to capture and escalate the incredible momentum of the song. in that respect, this situation reminds me of when Bark Psychosis dropped Codename: Dustsucker out of the blue & after a long and continuously stalled gestation period. They'd retooled and expanded their sound in engaging ways, but left a scattering of breakbeats intact that were basically the ghost of 1997.

but that's really my ONLY quip at this point - so far this record is the bees' knees.

I had no problem using a visa card.

I just feel sorry for Suede...

10am, Nov 11 1991, HMV Church Street, Liverpool. £6.99 for the LP. And now...this.

I just feel sorry for Suede...

― Doran

I heard D'angelo/Avalanches/Dr. Dre are all releasing comeback albums the same day Suede release theirs.

Album is fantastic and I say this as someone who really likes Loveless and Isn't Anything but doesn't quite love them like other people seem to. Just trying to decide which format to buy it on.

"I heard D'angelo/Avalanches/Dr. Dre are all releasing comeback albums the same day Suede release theirs."

Amazing. There's some dude called Lazarus is threatening to show his face as well.

Anyway, Ned Raggett (has a nice dinner with friends and then) ponders it all:

m b v track by track

will this be eligible for the regular album charts?

Probably

the sloooooow and steady melodic build & layers of fuzzed-out power chords of Only Tomorrow remind me of Raise-era Swervedriver - not at all a bad thing!

I might wait until it is available in the shops.

Actually, it's streaming on the Guardian's website.

Seems a bit ... nothing special, so far.

Just clicked this morning thinking 'why are there 400+ new posts?' there must be awesome lolz on this thread...to actually find a brand new rec is shocking.

Halfway through now..

i will be smoking a joint and listening to this later. wkd.

on 2nd listen now and its starting to sink in a bit. Loving it.

Yes very good. Feels like something old/something new.

hearing something new each time too

Loveless had shed loads of detail and hooks and songwriting that jumped at you from the first listen never mind the 10th.

Was listening to this and reading Ned's reaction piece. Like he says: no stopping of tracks, really sounds as if MBV really did this over a short period for the most part with perhaps finally working over some ideas they've spoken about in the past.

After who sees you I did find asking myself 'so what does pre-Isn't Anything? MBV material sounds like?'. As someone who loves all the EPs and the two albs I trusted people who said not to bother with anything before '87. WARNING SIGNS, right there.

Then as you move to the 2nd half you hear some more varied sonics and there are these 'we are not from mars really' vocal tics (which isn't bad at all, love the woooo in 'Only Tomorrow'), but it can't be said enough: this lacks enough hooks, songwriting and overload of detail.

Felt sad listening to Wonder 2: like here is the jungle stuff he talked about, and I wondered if he could have made more of it on more tracks (might have meant less Colm poor guy). It was always a myth anyway, nevertheless the gap adds a lot in your head and you have this fantasy that he went mad trying to re-create jungle (just as the thing was dying in the mid-90s) gave up and what you have is this remnant to mull over 15+ years later.

No track here besides Wonder 2 would make it as an MBV b-side from that period, never mind a track on Loveless.

Similarly I don't think any of this would break the top 10 on the 2013 tracks poll. Reckon the alb would make top 10 on enthusiasm I'm seeing here.

Having said all of this I'm glad that's all over with (lock thread etc). I do hope it was something recorded quickly to really just get it over with and that Shields et al. are on the first step to making something great in 18 months.

when does the backlash start?

Ned started it, not me.

When I hear the first massive chord of she found now, I keep on momentarily expecting it to break into a shoey cover of ABC's All Of My Heart.

I'll always remember where I was the day MBV started sounding like MBV: sitting on my couch listening to MBV.

Strongly suspect that this was mostly recorded in about 1996.

Do you think the title Only Tomorrow is callback to Only Shallow?

I wonder what the timeline is for the making of this album. was is it mostly recorded in 92, then tinkered with for 20 years? Or was it mostly recorded last year? post

Strongly suspect that this was mostly recorded in about 1996.

I would have thought recorded after they finished the comeback tour a few years back.

Of course it may have been recorded way back but it took a few years to master it post comeback tour

'nothing is' really sounds like Generation by Liturgy. Which is not really a problem, the idea wasn't invented by Liturgy, it's just like, halfbaked in comparison. Other than that, I like it after this first listen. Especially 'in another way' and 'wonder 2'. Will obviously have to listen to it not on youtube.

Can’t hear more than a very shallow similarity myself. Generation sounds like a rock band making rock music, with the progression in the playing, whereas 'Nothing As' sounds very much like a studio recording, sample-based, and using effects to produce textural changes over time, very similar to how you might make techno.

I seem to recall reading a paper somewhere on the topic of Liturgy inventing guitar and drums played in unison. Actually, it may have been by HHH himself.

Shields has already stated that this is stuff he started recording in the 90s.

I'm just finishing a record that I had started in the 90s. It was going to be, like, the next record. But it was already after the band had half split up, and me and Bilinda were left. Then we got back together.

http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/8809-kevin-shields/

Well, you haven't heard the drummachine-backed live-version of Generation, then ;) I mean, it is the same sort of punk-minimalism, but yeah, Liturgy was far from the first to use that sound.

Sounds good with textural changes. Didn't catch many of those on youtube, but will listen on something better soon.

I've enjoyed my one listen so far, but as much as I wish this was released back when it should have been released - 15 years ago or so - I have a feeling it would have met the fate of so many intriguing follow-up albums from shoegaze acts, like those from Slowdive or Seefeel, and just vanished into the ether without so much as a wide release.

Much better than "Chinese Democracy," though.

mbv is kind of a brilliant title. It lets some of the air out of the signifier.

this record has 2 problems imo:
1. it sounds like Loveless part 2.(nothing new)
2. Loveless is better.

otherwise, great record

this record is not like Loveless.

So general feeling is disappointment? Everybody is disappointed because Kevin Shields copied Squarepusher instead of, like, Burial in the electronic track and that he copied himself instead of, like, someone who doesn't exist yet?

It's sort of meta-disappointment, maybe: it sounds exactly like most people probably expected it to sound, but not as mind-blowing as some likely wanted it to sound.

that is the disadvantage of the higher-as-fuck expectations 22 years after the monster that was Loveless

Bits of it sound like a consolidation of a post-loveless sound. In the 2nd half they're going for different things.

xxp = i think its the feeling that this was the stuff left in a cupboard somewhere and then Shields decided to dust it off, release to get rid of it.

Given what a torture Loveless was to make I don't blame him if this indeed was the case.

I'm just playing their Louis Amrstrong cover now.

(and maybe that's the reason Shields postpone the release till now)

xpost to me

I like these songs fine, but the world would not have been a worse place if they had been parceled out track by track over those two decades, on comps, soundtracks, etc.

Oh shit, Only Tomorrow, oh shit, oh shit. Well, yeah, how can it not be? But more.

it's kind of impossible to compare the two because the world into which Loveless entered wasn't one where people felt such intense pressure to form a shareable opinion during their first listen. obv this is some old man yells at cloud shit, horse isn't going back into the barn, but it's really so pronounced in a case like this - literally no-one could conceivably have had time to reflect in any seriousness about the record. It hasn't been out for 24 hours. The chief quality of a critical opinion is reflection, but there's not going to be any about this record, or any record ever again - we get first impressions, which are kinda...boring and predictable? imo

aerosmith = completely OTM. It's also one reason why I listened to it once before even writing one word about it, and if Doran hadn't given me the commission -- and hey, I volunteered for it when he sent out an email so I knew what I was doing -- I would probably still be taking it all in and thinking. As it is I already feel my opinions changing further, though still hesitant.

I don't think ppl on ILX talking about their first impressions precludes deeper listening & more thoughtful discussion later

I don't see the harm in sharing first reactions. It's interesting to see how people are reacting in the heat of initial discovery. When we go to the movies with friends, for instance, the conversation afterwards is about what we just saw.