Now, some of you might be convinced that an album that has garnered God knows how many "*****" reviews must be the most amazing thing ever committed to tape. Well...hold on a sec. Yes, this is an incredible, peerless work by a truly gifted set of musicians, but it ain't fer everybody. If you go in to this record "unprepared", then it will undoubtedly leave you cold with the distinct aftertaste of hype lingering in your ears. So, with that in mind, here's a list of things you should know before you drop some hard-earned coin on the vaunted "Loveless":

-Musos beware! This band doesn't "do" ornate, baroque, "theory-happy", guitar-technique rock. You won't find any "fretboard fireworks", constantly shifting time signatures, "bitchin' licks" or any other "musical feats of athleticism" on this album. If you don't think that music can be impressive or innovative without any prog-rock/virtuoso wanking, then this ain't the album for you.

-If you don't "get it", then don't worry about it. This album isn't for everyone. It helps to approach this record with some knowledge of MBV's forebears and contemporaries. Listen to some Sonic Youth, the Jesus and Mary Chain, and Brian Eno (especially "Pussyfooting" with Robert Fripp). Being familiar with the first three Ramones albums wouldn't hurt either, considering that they are one of Kevin's big influences. Don't believe me? Listen to "Judy Is a Punk" and hum a MBV-ish "swooning" melody during the bridge. Bingo!

-Disregard any and all comparisons made between MBV and the Cocteau Twins. Similar aesthetic, radically different approach. The Cocteaus were filigree and lace, snowfall and sunlight, pretty, delicate, elegant and feminine. MBV was more like an erotic, androgynous blizzard of pink noise.

-Disregard any mention of My Bloody Valentine as an influence on crap like the Smashing Pumpkins. Layering 378 guitars isn't what MBV was all about. "Siamese Dream" may have been "inspired" by MBV, but it sounded like a pseudo-goth version of Boston in the end.

-Some folks claim that there are no "songs" on this album. Huh? "Only Shallow" is driven by an oceanic, Sabbath-esque riff that then melts into a beautiful pop melody in the verses. "When You Sleep" is a vast, goosebump-inducing slice of heaven that still manages to be a snappy little pop song. "Blown a Wish" melds sheer ambient loveliness with a beautiful melody and ends up sounding like Serge Gainsbourg circa 2400 AD. This is an extremely tuneful album. Anybody that doesn't think that there are any "songs" on this record needs to get their head examined.

-People often claim that LOVELESS sounds "flat" or "murky" and that the production on this record doesn't warrant the $500,000 price tag. Listen to this album with a pair of good headphones (the kind that don't say "Memorex" on the side) and prepare to find out where that half-mil of Alan McGee's cash went. If you want to hear really awful production values, then listen to "Isn't Anything" sometime. Hey, I've been a rabid MBV fan for over a decade and I still can't stand that album. The songs are fantastic, but the production is terrible. Yeech...

-Common complaint # 453: "You can't hear the vocals." MBV approached the vocals as another instrument, another layer of color. If you think that the vocals should have been mixed "high", then you're missing the point of the band's "symphonic" approach to making music. The vocals exist on the same aural level as the guitars and the bass so that each instrument would blend and harmonize to create new textures. Shields experimented with loops, tremolo, dissonance, harmony and the actual sound waves produced by the amplifiers to produce "ghosts" of melody that could only be heard when the amps were positioned just so and everything was mixed evenly. These "melodies" that were the result of the interference patterns produced by the instruments weren't composed, but they weren't accidental either. "To Here Knows When" and "Soon" are the best examples of this approach.

Enjoy!...


Noise?   June 2, 2002
Richard Connor (Manchester, England)
33 out of 35 found this review helpful

I decided to buy this album from all the good things that I had read about it, like its appearance in the top 50 albums of the last fifteen years in Q magazine and its placing of 65 in Colin Larkin's all-time top 1000 albums book in 2000. I noticed that it wasn't that well known but it was talked about as a masterpiece by many people. I found words like 'soundscapes' and 'dream pop' very alluring. It sounded like music I could really dive into. However, every review I read seemed to agree about one thing-this music wasn't normal. It was strange, and it was different.
From the opening drums and that blistering, interstellar riff of 'Only Shallow', I knew that Loveless was going to be something different. I liked that song, but I couldn't find anything else nearly as good as the album went on. Why was the tune of 'Loomer' hidden behind an unrelenting wall of sound? As for 'Touched' and 'To Here Knows When', blimey, I'd never heard anything like it in my life. Was it a joke? Why would a band wreck their own songs like that and then release them? The droning, warped strings of both songs were unbearable. I also singled out 'What You Want' for a grinding riff that sounded like a particularly amateur teenage grunge band practising in a garage. I liked the ambient interludes between songs, though.
For a while I thought the only reason that the album was acclaimed was because it was different and original. However I thought this was irrelevant as the songs were just much too dense and the album as a whole was a mess.
For some unexplained reason, though, I just couldn't leave the album alone. There was some part of me that knew there was hidden depths to this album, and how. In the beginning I just kept listening to 'Only Shallow' but little by little the songs seeped into my consiousness. I put it on a tape so I could listen to it wherever I went and I knew that, lacking the luxury of a 'skip track' button on a CD-player, I could give it a proper listen. It went from there. Soon I was listening to it straight through three times a day, and when I wasn't listening to it the songs were going round in my head.
Three months after I bought it, it toppled Radiohead's OK Computer as my favourite album, a feat achieved against incalculable odds. OK Computer being my favourite album was one of life great truths, like the sky being blue, and it had been felled by a record that, for a fortnight after I'd bought it, I couldn't stand and thought I'd wasted my money on.
I had come to realise that Loveless's noise was anything but. They were actually some of the most fully realised and beautiful songs I'd ever heard. 'When You Sleep', the album's most tuneful and accessible song along with 'Only Shallow', took a back seat alongside the epic beauty of 'Loomer','To Here Knows When' and 'Blown A Wish'. 'Loomer' really wouldn't function properly without its thrashy foreground, it would be missing something. 'To Here Knows When', in particular, is absolutely stunning. The background strings, at one time grating, now came to represent perfectly the complexity and the mystery of human emotion, for me anyway. It's like being lost in a big pink psychadelic dream, and having considered some transcribed lyrics and the music I haved come to the assumption that it's about having sex on LSD.
Every track on Loveless is good, but I think the pace slackens a little in the middle of the album, after such great songs as these. However, the last three songs are all excellent, 'Soon' being particularly worthy of mention due to its killer chorus. If you're going to buy this album be warned that this album is, to begin with, very difficult and a lot of patience. However there are so many hidden depths to this album that you can still find new things in songs you've heard many times.
The album does sound expensive and it is very dense, sometimes very loud. But it's great. A lot of time and effort has been put into this album and it was worth it. It deserves everone's attention, and that stretches to more than one listen. A lot more. If you write it off it's your own loss but listen. It's not noise. It's brilliant.


My MBV Saga   January 12, 2001
Jim Bailey (Spittle County, Wyoming)
19 out of 20 found this review helpful

Moved by challenging music, I bought Loveless based on high critical accolades, as a "classic album" of the 90's. I placed it in my CD, hit play, and got whacked upside the cranium with my first-ever full volume dose of MBV bad craziness. Confused, it angered me; all this seemingly intelligent, melodious pop blocked by Kevin Shield's ominous wall of distortion. Scratching my sore head as to what compelled me to buy the CD, I put it away. But something about MBV and Loveless hooked me enough on my first disgust-laden listen. After a month or so, I pulled it out, mind open, equalizer ready, and gave it a careful second listen. Then a third, fourth, and fifth; with each successive listening, I further comprehended and grooved with all the pop and vocal and harmonic and discordant nuances--until I get hooked on the sixth. And it's the artistic masterpiece the other reviewers have opined.

For me, 6 listens is a new record. And it's well worth the effort. Loveless is unlike anything else musically out there, ever. For this reason alone,if you're a MBV newbie--like I was--give it a few chances. Then groove on....


Loveless thunders elephantine!   July 16, 2000
Ian Lamb (Chicago, IL USA)
18 out of 19 found this review helpful

If music is the external record of the evolution of the human consciousness to a point in time where all sound, even the white noise that is the universal frequency of interstellar energies, is heard with wonder and as manifesting beauty because it is one with our experiential perception of god, then My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless" is nothing less than a landmark record in that evolution.

Language is usually a poor tool to communicate the experience of sound, and it is rendered useless when presented with a document like this. If I were to try I might suggest words like "beautiful", "oceanic", "sensuous", "sensual", "ecstatic", "dreamlike", "orgasmic", "breathtaking", "emotive", "transcendent", "psychedelic", "mesmerizing", "elephantine", "lullaby", "ethereal", "soothing", "mellifluous" and "euphoric", but I would simply sound like an Amazon reviewer whose specialty is hyperbole as opposed to subjective critique. Make no mistake, however...this album is nothing short of extraordinary in every way. The fact that so little has come close to its power and grace since its release in 1991 is either testament to the vision of its creators, or proof that human beings are able to successfully channel the mysteries into an audio recording.

I feel this album is also an excellent example of the kind of textural tone colors that can be realized through the creative use of a guitar and digital sampler. The stereo mix might be described as "distorted", "out of tune", or "unbalanced" to the casual listener, and indeed, the recording is ripe with the sounds of machines being used in ways for which they were not designed. By the same measure, Les Paul was criticized for electrifying the guitar. "Loveless" is a wonderful album for the musician, as it will challenge, confound, and leap over your preconceptions of what music and sound should be.

It has been said that an essential quality of good art is its ability to leave each who witnesses it changed, and the fact that everyone who hears this album either swoons or recoils is proof that this is art with a capital "A".

I give "Loveless" my absolute and highest recommendation. No degree or amount of accolades do it justice, and my life is richer for having heard it. What more can I say?