The Return Of My Bloody Valentine

to here knows when?

In MBV years, that's 11 years. Yes! Half way there!

I'm officially in love with the new album and I'm sorry for the people who are not enjoying it (this includes Simon Reynolds with whom I bumped into some years ago. I was completely drunk and said 'are you the famous Simon Reynolds?'. god, I'm embarassed now)

I took my first crack at the album over the weekend. First listen was on the drive up to Vermont Friday morning, just ahead of the snowstorm, set at top volume. Yes, this experience pairs nicely. The two that clicked with me the most were "new you" and "wonder 2." The jungle track seems oddly misplaced until I think about how much nostalgia has pervaded indie culture ("Remember the 90s!" and whatnot), then I realize it's pretty much the perfect closer, since in the act of remembering, jungle was pushed along to memory's wayside. (For me, at least. I'm sure there are electronic enthusiasts here who will disagree.)

Here's the strange thing that happened on subsequent listens: My dog got *really* into this record. With every track, he'd close his eyes, his head would bob, and then he'd just zone out. I wish I was kidding. Since every track on here ends abruptly, he would be jolted out of his vibey bliss, stand up and look at us, like "Where'd the music go?" Since the dog is really bad with cars, we pretty much listened to it non-stop on the 9-hour drive home with zero barking, or other anxiety issues. (Also, driving through snow, rain, and dense fog will forever now be linked to the experience of this album.)

Has anyone had their pets react to the album in a similar fashion?

ahah, sounds great !
dunno about my dog, though, cos whatever happens, he zones out...

I should note our dog has never shown any reaction to music prior to this. Going to experiment with other MBV/shoegaze albums and see if there's a similar response.

You could make money on YouTube!

Listened to this this morning, albeit half of it on a busy train to Kings Cross. Seemed very good, if a little subdued compared to Loveless (not a criticism). Will need to take another listen tonight.

I know people are sick of me asking, but has anyone heard whether there'll be a way to buy this outside of their site?

Oddly enough, my cat also loves this record, and has shown no prior interest in music! But she will sit enraptured with her ears perked up and listen to the whole thing.

xposts

My goldfish maintains Ecstasy was their pinnacle.

there might be a whole part of the record that our human ears are missing... that might be what took KS so long to record... better than ghost tracks !

My Cat was curled up in a circle like the cover of the 1st Chapterhouse album, purring, next the speakers, when I was playing this last night. I don't know whether it was an expression of self referential humour or not. She likes lots of stuff though, and often miaows along to Zappi's La Luna Discordia album.

People keep saying about d'n'b on this album, but I don't hear any. Where is it? I must be listening to this wrong.

'nothing is' is the one track people are calling DnB.

lol I was gonna say "listen for the one that sounds like Third Eye Foundation"

Also, driving through snow, rain, and dense fog will forever now be linked to the experience of this album.)

my most intense experience with their music was in the winter of 1992 when i listened to loveless in my car going home to luxembourg after a carnival party in trier. usually that ride took about 45 minutes at the time (the motorway wasn't finished yet i think). it took me more than two hours as the fog slowed me down to 20-30 kilometers per hour. i was really thrown back onto the music as i didn't see a thing. and the music was as nebulous as my view. it was like a kind of negative feedback. i can't say how happy i was when i fell into my bed.

my cat loves this

Interesting. I wrote a review of this album with an entire "into the ship" and "out to sea" metaphor. There was all sorts of comparison to rain, hail, thunder, and snowstorm.

I think I got too creative with it, but whatevs.

My cats suck at music.

nothing is' is the one track people are calling DnB.

Hmm, not sure about that. The two which sounded like 'drum' but without the bass were 'In Another Way' and 'Wonder 2'.

It's working
5 Listens in.
Genuinely. i'm starting to enjoy this

I am one of the most disastrous, cynical creatures sadly living

If I am .

Current top of the pops

i think "in another way" is secretly best track on the album. it creeps up on you.

was my favourite on first listen & has remained so ever since, tbf, although 'wonder 2' is pushing it hard. both songs are astounding

it turns out 'is this and yes' and 'if i am' are really, really exceptional as well. have slept on those two. my god, the whole album. amazing. although 'if i am' reminds me of a serena-maneesh song

'don't come down here', also something a bit chapterhousey about it, but it's still goddamn wonderful

Deffo no DnB on this album.

I got momentarily excited at the thought, but there is none.

has someone already received the cd/vinyl? right now there are offers at 147 euros at ebay for the cd+vinyl.

― it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), zaterdag 9 februari 2013 13:25 (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don’t think it’s being shipped for another couple of weeks.

― Chewshabadoo, zaterdag 9 februari 2013 14:53 (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And it’s still available online too!

― Chewshabadoo, zaterdag 9 februari 2013 14:54 (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my guess would be that cd and vinyl do not exist as yet.

My Bloody Valentine
there are a number of people on e bay trying to sell our album at greatly inflated prices, they do not have the album, and are, as such, selling a product that does not exist yet. please do not buy from these people. Our ship date for orders placed on our website is Feb 22nd. this is the date that finished stock will exist.

I like 'wonder 2' but man it is not a fun thing to listen to in the morning

chapterhouse recorded more than one album, fuck me the first one was hopeless enough

although 'if i am' reminds me of a serena-maneesh song

am now thinking it's more like the outro on one of the songs from bark psychosis' 'codename: dustsucker'

this album is extremely good btw*, and it's a grower

*would basically put it alongside Loveless

it's good. it always seems to be over quite quickly though, in a "wait, was that it??!" kind of way.

yeah, totally. it's a good thing that ~45 minutes flies by! i think the reason that it feels short is that the last few songs, (the last two for sure) kind of veer off in a more experimental section, so the more conventional guts of the album actually concludes after 7 songs instead of the full 9.

Roz, that's why have the muffs :)

we lol

Rob Sheffield wrote about the new album:

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/blogs/pop-life/my-hundredth-listen-to-the-new-my-bloody-valentine-album-even-better-than-the-first-20130214#ixzz2L5Ezr0x0

My Hundredth Listen to the New My Bloody Valentine Album: Even Better Than the First
POSTED: February 14, 2:47 PM ET

Comment7

My Bloody Valentine performs during All Points West at Liberty State Park in New Jersey.
Bryan Bedder/Getty Images
So now we know what Bill Murray whispered to Scarlett Johansson at the end of Lost In Translation: "Don't worry – My Bloody Valentine only have another decade to go." After a couple of weeks and a hundred listens, it's pretty obvious that the new My Bloody Valentine album is even greater than we all spent years hoping. The world has waited almost 22 years, but suddenly the weirdness that MBV finally exists has been replaced by the weirdness of the album itself. The tortured backstory already seems like a footnote. Now we all have bigger questions to face, like whether "Only Tomorrow" or "New You" is the most insanely beautiful song in the universe. After 12 days of full immersion, the music sounds more mysterious, not less.

As soon as it dropped on February 2nd, just in time to make this the bloodiest Valentine's Day ever, it was easy to tell MBV was amazing. Me, I burned a disc and taped it onto both sides of a cassette so I could let it loop all day. Sometimes I play the CD, the laptop, or whatever noise-making device is at hand. But I'm not even close to using it up, because MBV is even more amazing than it originally seemed, and the hundredth listen beats the first. I don't plan to get sick of these songs until mid-October. (Except "Nothing Is," which I've pencilled in for April.)

Album Review: My Bloody Valentine, MBV

It's hard to place this music in history. Had MBV released the exact same album in 1993, "Nothing Is" would have seemed like their attempt to jack Nine Inch Nails, while "New You" would have seemed like their attempt to replace 10,000 Maniacs' "Candy Everybody Wants" in Chelsea Clinton's Walkman. It's impossible to even guess how far back the material dates. (No way could "Wonder 2" have been recorded any later than the spring of 1999 – even Bowie was through with drum-and-bass by then.) Yet that's part of the mystery.

Kevin Shields' guitar sounds sexual – in a way, his guitar is like the late Luther Vandross' voice. Both artists have an erotic signature sound that's so massive, it's a pure abstraction. Shields' guitar and Vandross' voice radiate the helplessness of love, as if they're letting themselves get totally swallowed up, as if surrendering to the hugeness of the sound is the same thing as surrendering to love. I've always liked the title of my favorite Luther record: The Best of Luther Vandross . . . The Best of Love. Obviously there's an arrogance in trying to sing in the voice of love itself, but both guys sound ego-free because their identity gets dissolved in the romance of this sound, a romance they share with their audience. (That's why not even hardcore fans seem to care about these guys' individual personalities, or their private lives.)

The album divides into three segments: the "sounds like Loveless" ones, the "sounds like Stereolab" ones, and the ones Kevin Shields was probably saving for the soundtrack of Lost In Translation 2: Havana Nights. "In Another Way" echoes the Gary Numan revival of the late 2000s, but given the way Shields works, it might be a leftover from the Gary Numan revival of the mid-1990s. "New You" leaves third-degree Blow Monkeys burns all over my brain. Yet despite the labor pains, none of MBV sounds strained or overworked. It forces you to give up any hope of consuming it in a hurry.

That's how Loveless flowed, too. It was a word-of-mouth sensation, in a more enigma-friendly era. After years of listening obsessively to Loveless, I still don't know any of the lyrics or song titles. (My favorite is called something like "When You Awake" or "What You Need" – I'd have to look it up.) It's harder to get away with that kind of mystique these days.

The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time: My Bloody Valentine, Loveless

It wasn't until around 1995 or so that the failure of this album to arrive became a worldwide joke. But most fans probably figured it could never live up to our hopes. That's how it goes with long-awaited follow-ups – most of the time, you get a Chinese Democracy. Other times you get the artist testing the waters, like Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, which came out 17 years after Gravity's Rainbow and basically functioned as a "watch this space" flier for Mason & Dixon and Against the Day.

But sometimes you get the real thing, as with James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Like Chinese Democracy and Vineland, Finnegans Wake took 17 years, as everybody wondered how Joyce could follow a masterpiece like Ulysses. The Wake inspired a book of critical essays before it even came out, based on the "Work in Progress" fragments he published in lit mags. But when the Wake arrived, the long wait was forgotten, because it turned out to be another masterpiece that gave everyone more interesting problems. And now MBV is the new My Bloody Valentine masterpiece, ever since it arrived on February 2nd, which happens to be the same date Joyce published Ulysses in 1922, on his birthday. He was hoping to release Finnegans Wake on February 2nd as well, but it took him a few more months. (Joyce and Shields are Irish guys. Ever wait for an Irish guy to show up on time? Don't.)

Sometimes you spend your life waiting for a moment that just don't come, but then it comes, and then it isn't a moment anymore. It's part of your life, part of the world. There's something bittersweet about losing that moment. But only a moron chooses a moment over a life, just as only a moron would rather wait for the My Bloody Valentine album than listen to it. MBV isn't a work in progress now – it's just a work. And the most insanely beautiful song in the universe? Definitely "New You." Or "Only Tomorrow." No, "New You." This might take some time.

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Kevin Shields' guitar sounds sexual – in a way, his guitar is like the late Luther Vandross' voice. Both artists have an erotic signature sound that's so massive, it's a pure abstraction.

loooove the analogy

http://i.imgur.com/8aD5fCq.gif

I saw mbv live last night. They were pretty awesome - a very different beast live to on record. Seeing Kev get out an acoustic guitar and realising they were doing "Cigarette in your Bed" made me almost fall over in delight, christ it was good (they did "Slow" and "Thorn" as well - is that a common thing?).

Only one track from the new album though! Which was odd. And the "you made me realise" blast went for 15 minutes. It was like standing in an explosion. I thought I was ready for it but nothing prepares you for that headfuck.

I was there too Trayce! Are you seeing them again on Friday?

No I couldnt afford to buy ATP and sideshow tix (as I also got GYBE tix. too many damn shows). Its sold out now innit?

I put my question to the MBV site gods, will let you know if I hear anything

Norman Records are also selling it in the UK, at least.

Hmm, I wonder where Norman is getting it, their prices are a lot better than any wholesale we've been offered would allow.

could be loss leader

Could be. The wholesale we have seen is actually higher than mbv website retail price!

And now MBV is the new My Bloody Valentine masterpiece

Short version.