Loveless: Classic or Not That Classic

Ok, yeah, Trompe Le Monde, Laughing Stock, Bandwagonesque, Yourself Is Steam, She Hangs Brightly, Perfect Sound Forever, Sebadoh III, White Light From The Mouth of Infinity, Distant Plastic Trees, Real Ramona, Eye (from the year before), Blake Babies (from the year before) all seemed more important at the time. And. Still. Do.

i was in the midst of battling a crippling depression and this record was like a warm cozy blanket i could retreat to. it's still amazing how they managed to make a wall of freaky guitars sound so welcoming.

beautiful guitar sounds

compositions themselves are a little lacking

a few good tracks

7/10 for effort

saying the drums suck on this or these songs actually aren't very good songs seems like entirely missing the point.

I don't think this is a popular choice, but "Loomer" has always been my favourite on this album. One of the simplest tracks and totally perfect.

saying the drums suck on this or these songs actually aren't very good songs seems like entirely missing the point.

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Friday, November 4, 2016 11:00 AM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the drum thing is especially stupid because the only time they're high enough in the mix to discern their "suckiness" or whatever is in the first 3 seconds of the first track

beautiful guitar sounds

compositions themselves are a little lacking

a few good tracks

7/10 for effort

honestly years ago I had the same effusive opinions as everybody else but these days this'd be about 2/3 of my opinion. I think all the tracks are at least pretty good and would still give it a 9 because the overall effect remains a great listen and if any given track comes up on the radio it's always welcome -- and, honestly, I think this is a hidden feature of this album. its songs, if heard in another context, always leap out: "now that's something different." the only way it might be otherwise if if your mix/show was entirely people/bands who'd been influenced by this album.

but I think it's fair to say that the actual songwriting is the weak point here and "well, the lyrics aren't the point" is always a cop-out when lyrics aren't on the level of the rest. like, yeah the lyrics aren't the point, but there's a whole lot of music out there that goes the extra mile and throws in some good lyrics ~whether they're the point or not~

yeah it's almost analogous to the straw thrown by people who rail against audiophile pressings and stuff... it's not like "everything that doesn't go the extra mile is bad", it's "stuff that goes the extra mile is good"

In an interview with The Quietus prior to MBV's release, Shields said the album was "not going to sound like Loveless where it's like looking into another world ... more like Isn't Anything, where it seems to be of this world, but with one foot in another world ... the songs on Loveless had more in common with folk-blues music to me, just a verse and an instrumental passage, circular" and described the new material as "more elongated" and "raw." The Beach Boys' unfinished album Smile was an influence on the composition. According to Shields, he "wanted to see what would happen if I worked in a more impressionistic way, so that it only comes together at the end." He later expanded on his comments, stating that he was "purposefully not trying to write songs with a beginning, middle, and end."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBV_(album)

See, I don't know that better lyrics would make this album better. I think it's an important feature of this album that the lyrics don't draw attention to themselves. You can't always make them out, and the ones you can make out have a kind of hazy generality. There's never any lyric that stops your attention. I feel like that's part of what makes everything flow together.

the lyrics are there for the sounds alone imo. i don't think i learned a single lyric until needed to learn the keyboard part to "When You Sleep" for a house show. the vocals being so whispery and abstract was a huge deal.

"Loomer" so great!

not Wall of Sound, Mash Potatoes of Sound.

the lyrics to this album have never bothered me because i've never been able to understand almost any of them

I've got a confession to make, I've never heard this album. FP me now.

All time best records/songs/lyrics you've never heard

the lyrics to this album have never bothered me because i've never been able to understand almost any of them

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, November 4, 2016 12:32 PM (forty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

right, my argument isn't that we should dock this album points for not having great lyrics, it's that great lyrics are a bonus because the vast majority of lyrics are shit

lyrics in general i mean, w/r/t to my second clause there

ymmv, i suck deal with it caveat etc

What is the best shoegaze band for lyrics, anyway?

it's a good album and there are v transcendently beautiful and affecting moments on it but for me personally it is not particularly classic or essential

i have no idea what the lyrics are on this album. a great album, i don't reach for it very often anymore, partly because my wife thinks it's shit. and i saw them when they did their reunion uk tour and they were the sloppiest band I've ever seen and it was garbage

- I don't know what any of the lyrics are on this album, and I've really never cared.

- Even with this, and the albums sonic qualities in mind, I think the songwriting is actually quite strong and loaded with hooks.

- The drumming is noticeably sampled throughout the record.

- My original CD version is one of the quietest CD's I own!

What is the best shoegaze band for lyrics, anyway?

― I look forward to hearing from you shortly, (Karl Malone), Friday, November 4, 2016 9:25 PM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Slowdive.

Verve, probably.

What is the best shoegaze band for lyrics, anyway?

Its like saying "Van Gogh's Sunflowers would be better with words"

(Like 'for Amy' heh..)

Cocteau Twins otm except despite having loved them hard for 20 odd years now they never once struck me as being 'shoegaze'...?

ya if anything they're kind of like proto-shoegazey but that's stretching it

maybe dreampop or something?

I think the only shoegaze lyric I've *ever* registered was that Ride line after they weren't shoegaze anymore about the underfed girls, which is a great line.

I never had a problem w/MBV's lyrics or drums or anything. Just this nagging feeling that the album wasn't quite as revolutionary as it was made out to be, which isn't to say that I don't like it, etc. The songwriting on the previous album was more interesting, and I've always wished they'd figured out some way to incorporate that into the latter's sound. But they didn't, so whatever.

We don't get music nerdy so much anymore, but they did this thing with major 2nd intervals that did/didn't resolve that was really interesting in the context of pop songs all fuzzed up.

Shoegaze is to dream pop what funk is to soul.

...

In that shoegaze is an extension of dream pop in which some of dream pop's elements are further emphasised, like funk is a variation on soul with some of its elements further emphasised.

i guess i see funk and soul as two "branches" off of "r&b"

shoegaze more like dream pop + noisy indie rock

i don't know what i'm talking about, though

ha

ya the world of categorizing music

basically though i never thought of cocteau twins in the same style as mbv, specifically because of mbv's noisier aspect

but then again i can see cocteau twins and slowdive being compared so who knows

My view of this is based 100% on the guitar magazine article I read when I was 13 that introduced me to the concept: "dream pop" and "shoegaze" are synonyms.

And both terms refer to a psychedelic aesthetic where vocals are buried under a barrage of processed guitar sounds, extending the sonic experimentation of early Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix. I dunno wtf the Cocteau Twins have to do with this.

Actually, I have never heard anyone say "dream pop" irl.

I want to find that article. It made the music sound so amazing. Loveless is great but I don't know if it ever fully lived up to what I imagined when I read it.

I'm Only Sleeping

When I discovered MBV in the early 90s at the radio show their music was referred to as noisy rock or like Dinosaur Jr. or even Yo La Tengo at the time. I always found the term shoegazing a bit silly as it does not really describe the music.

Radio show of Bernard Lenoir on France Inter...

Shoegazing doesn't describe music at all, it describes looking down at pedals. That's not to say it isn't a daft term.

I always thought AR Kane or Simon Reynolds writing about AR Kane came up with the term "Dreampop". And AR Kane were doing shoegaze before MBV as well if I'm not mistaken.

damn, i totally thought dreampop = cocteau twins and cranes

research into Ethereal Goth and Dreampop (and other stuff for fans of early 4AD and Projekt)

possibly but i don't think simon had pump up the volume in mind when he came up with it?

more of the cocteau twins sound

Ha, I never knew A. R. Kane was part of M/A/R/R/S.

possibly but i don't think simon had pump up the volume in mind when he came up with it?

more of the cocteau twins sound

probably means the when you're sad/so far away 12"

Lol yeah I wasn't referring to their M/A/R/R/S stuff.