The Return Of My Bloody Valentine

And re wonder 2: aargh really not quite clicking but I've also been listening to stuff listed in the Restrospective mixes (e.g. contemporary mixes of 90s jungle) thread.

Needs a good think, the only track of interest.

drumming by steve reich i mean obviously.

he's in mbv now?

mbv's melodies are more aggressive and tense than those of Loveless. a big advantage.

fwiw I'm not a big fan of Only Shallow - I don't like the noisy bit. Loomer, To Here Knows When, Soon, Blown A Wish = all much better.

havent had time lately to listen to mbv again but all those reviews that have been thrust on the net are bit.. surprising.

I don't like the noisy bit.

jamie ya wuss! ;)

I feel like I need to qualify/explain that, but it's difficult. I'm quite happy with things being noisy (e.g. You Made Me Realise) or very odd (e.g. To Here Knows When), but there's a certain type of deliberately-odd-mechanistic-noisiness that just leaves me cold, which is why (for example) I gradually lost interest in Aphex Twin over successive albums.

M B V is undoubtedly going to feature in my ballot when the EOY poll comes around. Not really getting some of the criticisms, to be honest, especially of 'Nothing Is' (which in my opinion, is ace). Great record.

At this point I haven't moved from my feeling that this is a perfectly nice record, but not anything more. There is a stunning EPs worth of material, and some songs ranging from take it or leave it to wow, I don't want to hear that again.

But you know, five days in and about a spin per day. A lot can change.

I think "New You" is my fave these days.

Divided opinions! I love "nothing is", its anything but boring to me.

And hell yeah is "When you sleep" a pop song, and nowhere more is this in evidence than Shonen Knife's adorable cover of it!

heh so somehow we've never polled loveless huh

Best Song on "Loveless"

Sometimes is the obvious 'oh this was an Indie pop song' thing buried under a beautiful murk. With a lot of the others its often hard to tell what they could've sounded like really. This would suggest they were almost nervous of exposing the thinness of the songs but the results are so good.

I've always thought that the songs on Loveless are kept really basic because they're meant to act as vessels to textural exploration. If they obtruded more, the effect of abstraction would be lost. It's like how a Turner painting needs to be kept clear of too many objects in order to achieve its atmospheric effects.

Yeah, they're like rice or pasta for a really fancy sauce / spice mix.

I think a lot of the songs on Loveless are quite poppy at their core, actually. Especially compared to the material on the new record.

I reckon you could do a synthpop version of 'To Here Knows When', and it would still stand up as a song even without the overwhelming amount of noise that's piled on top of it.

I've listened to "Wonder 2" twice. Now I'm going to listen again, followed by Prince's "I Wonder U."

Shonen Knife should've done every cover on that Yellow Loveless thing.

I reckon you could do a synthpop version of 'To Here Knows When', and it would still stand up as a song even without the overwhelming amount of noise that's piled on top of it.

Not synthpop, but there's this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UlaFVZZZkY

The songs on Loveless are melodically gorgeous and yeah really poppy, they're a massive and integral part of its appeal.

Also, this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Ah2Eo-HMQ

Was just about to post that.

Also, I think I've said this before, but I have a feeling that the relative "sonic lightness" of 'New You' was done on purpose, and is there to give the album a "breather moment" to prepare the listener for the last three tracks.

What those covers show is how 'thin' the songs are, in the sense they demand the song to be layered with an arrangement - as great as the vocal hook o To Here Knows When is I doubt it would work if it had gone on like that with the piano and the half-finished lyrics.

That confirms some of what Jim is saying, but 'atmosphere' sounds like something you'd do on the periphery of the song and here its totally and utterly centralised which is why you could equally say (as Matt does) that the songs are great and poppy. You can make an arg for the songs being gorgeous and thin at the same time.

Overall they achieve melody by other means, a trick MBV have been unable to repeat on the 1st half of this record, which has been overlooked by the nostalgia surrounding their return at the min.

um, all songs need an arrangement.

Except for "Mad World" obviously...

demand layering vs. need an arrangement.

I'll add that it should dense too.

The songs on Loveless are melodically gorgeous and yeah really poppy, they're a massive and integral part of its appeal.

everyone itt should hear Japancakes' track-by-track instrumental cover/tribute album http://youtu.be/abXxTCxjPzQ

Reynolds' assessment, seems incredibly harsh:

Strangely in the whole quite long piece, Maura doesn't mention the My Bloody Valentine record and the huge nostalgia-driven swell of attention, discussion, etc about what is effectively a time capsule from the mid-Nineties.

(My initial reaction to the news of the album was to feel vaguely inconvenienced, as if by the sudden arrival on your doorstep, without any advance warning, of an old dear friend you haven't seen in 20 years -- you know you should be overjoyed, but life's moved on a lot, your head is in a completely different place, the timing feels off)

(My initial reaction to hearing the record, having finally succumbed to curiosity and proddings from the wife, was "Can I have my 42 dollars back please?". Hopefully that'll fade on repeat plays. Hopefully the vinyl, whenever the fuck it turns up, will be glorious sounding. But in MP3 form, even when burned to CD-R and played on a good stereo, m b v mostly sounds dead to me, in an eerie but not particularly pleasing or compelling way. There's something rhythmically suppressed, aurally suffocated about the bulk of it - like my slight misgivings about Loveless were premonitions. If only the last track were the first track and it took off from there).

http://retromaniabysimonreynolds.blogspot.com/2013/02/maura-johnston-asks-why-cant-we-leave.html

Should have gone for the .wav files

Should have gone for the .wav files

― Mark G, Friday, February 8, 2013 11:53 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

feeling likewise

Loveless sounds good on youtube, .mp3, etc. and many here have burned the new m b v mp3s and played it on speakers and gave it the thumbs up.

Would like to hear more of SR's thoughts on Wonder 2 some more (careful what you wish for so maybe not). But yes I am also thinking there was an idea here, that's where they were going to next back in '95 and...it never ever took off.

That, and those remixes from the late 90s...there were always ideas but MBV stopped being the vehicle to realise these.

I really enjoy Simon Reynolds' writings, but I have to say I'm not fully understanding what he's getting at with the new album. Which is fair enough, because it's not a proper review. And I await that eagerly.

In his metaphor, his "head is in a completely different place". But this goes both ways. He seems to be expecting the old, unchanged friend. Has he thought this old friend also has his head in a completely different place, too? This is why "the timing feels off". It has happened. It happened to me two years ago. When I moved and met up with an old friend, he was extremely different with gestures and certain habits that hinted that deep down inside there was some vestige of my old friend left from 15 years ago.

Loveless somehow feels like a more dynamic album because of it has more higher end. The high end is kind of 'rolled off' in m b v. The details are in the mids and lows, which is perfect because our ear discerns more detail in the mids. Personally, I have always loved this and the last album I recorded was done with a similar concept: nice heavy drums and bass; big lows and mids, with few high ends. If I learned something from making that album is that when mastering it for the radio, they completely stripped all of its dynamics. Personally, I thought mastering an album like this ruined it and it should have had very little 'mastering'.

I'm wondering if a less compressed, more "live" or "off the floor" recording or version would make some people happier when focusing so much on lows and mids.

Just my $0.05 CAD. ;-)

I'm also wondering if the emphasis on lows and mids has anything to do with Shields hearing. He did, after all, surround himself with really heavy noise at high frequencies.

i guess i'm just really glad that i'm not a super intense fan of MBV and i can just listen to this as a new album of a band that i think is cool & has a good sound and not really have to compare it to some romanticized personal experience of college or whatever

How dare you

haha...btw is the album wearing well with you ned?

yeah Ned I need an update

iirc Ned has wholly rejected My Bloody Valentine & is now championing Pokey LaFarge

Yeah fuck that limey shit.

Still loving it, letting it settle in, honestly hearing new things each time. It wasn't until today I actually heard the drums at the start of "Wonder 2" underneath the roaring murk. I can sense why Simon's conclusions are as they are but...*shrugs*...hey, I'm not him!

i guess i'm just really glad that i'm not a super intense fan of MBV and i can just listen to this as a new album of a band that i think is cool & has a good sound and not really have to compare it to some romanticized personal experience of college or whatever

― downton arby (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, February 8, 2013 2:36 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

He seems to be expecting the old, unchanged friend. Has he thought this old friend also has his head in a completely different place, too?

with the comment on 'wonder 2' what SR seems to be saying is that his friend is, if anything, not changed enough from 15 years ago. They haven't gone to a different place.

I'm quite happy with the place they're at, thanks very much.

You're full of RETROMANIA!

I'm also wondering if the emphasis on lows and mids has anything to do with Shields hearing. He did, after all, surround himself with really heavy noise at high frequencies.

Thought it went the other way around? That as we age we hear fewer high frequencies so we're more likely to add treble because that's what sounds right, or balanced or whatever.

source: fifteen-year old Aphex Twin interview

I'm not trying to say anything new. Just clarifying that his friend's mind might be elsewhere and that it simply doesn't coincide with SR's. And that they may be so far apart from each other, that they can't understand one another.

I can't hold it against KS for making music he likes to make and force him, instead, to make something that is vastly different from before. But I think this complaint already lies in the realm of the discourse of the job and importance (or lack thereof) of the music critic. You have people pushing sound and being more inventive, such as Woebot (who SR likes), and then you have the other extreme which is people playing because it feels right or 'good'. I guess in a perfect world, musicians would find some middle ground, but I don't think we should be harsh with those that do not, especially when that 'middle ground' seems to be so elusive and ever-changing depending on what (moving) extremes you choose. Just my thoughts.

Eris Bueller, I guess what I meant to say was he might be sensitive to brighter sounds. I know people that have gone to too many live shows and find bright sounds discomforting, whereas mids are still bearable. But it does vary depending on how you've ruined your ears. Take it with a grain a salt because this is anecdotal and I do not have any scientific data to back this up.

xposts you are correct

doesn't this just sound bassier and fuller because, uh, it wasn't made with tech from the arse end of the 80s. we're missing something that made loveless great, 'pop-noise-pop' all focused in a narrow freq range. loads is left up to the imagination and the listening situation with loveless. loveless sounds great super quiet and super loud and they feel like two different things to me.

not that i'm complaining about m b v, this is a great sounding record. reminds me of portishead 'third', mastery of the recording situation, very mature melodically, patient, focused record that you want to give time to becuase you know what the people that made it are capable of