Loveless: Classic or Not That Classic

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.

I'm on an MBV kick thanks to this thread.

"Off Your Face" is amaaazing

The only thing bad I can say about *Loveless* is I know of no other album that's harmed as much by mp3 compression. This one really, really requires FLAC to breathe.

Just this nagging feeling that the album wasn't quite as revolutionary as it was made out to be

This is still one of my favorite albums, but i remember at the time thinking that Glider was the totally revolutionary release. I don't just recall where i was when I first heard "Soon" on the EP, but I can recall the entire experience. Loveless was perfect, and it would have been more revolutionary had it appeared first.

If there's any what-if about the album, it's how the album would have sounded had Colm performed more "live" drums on the songs as opposed to his parts being sequenced. Some of the songs might have benefitted from more emotional drumming.

yeah he was the secret weapon each time i've seen them

"Off Your Face" is

yep, brilliant song

https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/my-bloody-valentines-kevin-shields-dissects-his-new-loveless-vinyl-remaster-talks-new-album/
Talking to the 54-year-old about Loveless is fascinating because it’s clear that the record is, for him, very much a living thing that exists in the present.
...
Are you working on a new My Bloody Valentine album now?

We started recording it a year ago
...
So you’d like to have it out next year?

Oh, we one hundred percent will.

m b v is the best thing they've ever done. I want to believe the next one will top it.

When it comes to technical stuff Kevin has this way of saying things that sound like they might be bs but are actually entirely the case.

Obviously this principal does not necessarily apply to release schedules.

Though you could have made this new vinyl version a 2xLP set, putting less information on each side and improving the overall quality, you decided to do a single disc. Why?

I wanted it to actually be played the way it was originally conceived, which is basically an A and B side: Loveless is like a mirror image of itself on each side. It works as a continuous thing. That’s where I got a little nuts, but it was one of the things that I got right (initially). The obvious thing to do in this day and age would be to cut it onto two vinyls. That’s something I will do someday, just for the pure sound quality. But from the perspective of listening to it, I didn’t want that to be the only version that people had access to, because it just breaks it up. There are compromises.

very cool

https://d1rgjmn2wmqeif.cloudfront.net/r/l/254190-1.png

The official Shirt.

£144

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