My Bloody Valentine – ‘Loveless’
The shoegaze genre emerged in the United Kingdom and Ireland during the late 1980s. A wave of young bands began experimenting with their instruments and pedals, prioritising distortion, feedback and thick layers of sound. However, these abrasive features were usually contrasted with dream-like vocal melodies, giving the music a uniquely emotive sound. Although incredible bands such as Ride, Slowdive, Pale Saints and Lush made significant contributions to the scene, My Bloody Valentine were the genre’s definitive voice. Their second album, Loveless, remains the most vital shoegaze album ever made.
Spanning eleven tracks, Loveless is simultaneously harsh and melodic, toying with the listener through its teasing of harmony among discordant tones. Meticulously crafted, My Bloody Valentine’s sophomore effort is demonstrative of the band’s insatiable appetite for newness and innovation, becoming pioneers and masters of the shoegazing genre.
Loveless opens with an unforgettable, hard-hitting stomper, ‘Only Shallow’. Beginning with Colm Ó Cíosóig’s confronting drum hits, the song quickly launches into an attack of sound dominated by Kevin Shields’ ‘glide guitar’, a technique he developed himself. The result is a mind-warping flurry of noise that sweeps the listener in with an intense embrace before slowing to allow Bilinda Butcher’s spacey, ambiguous lyrics to be heard.
The track flows freely into ‘Loomer’, which contains multiple layers that create an evocative, nostalgic feel. The underlying instrumentals give the effect of listening to the distant sounds of a band playing a loud gig while you’re in another room nearby. However, a bittersweet, melodious riff plays over the top, pairing nicely with Butcher’s wistful lyrics, singing, “Little girls in their party dresses/Didn’t love anything there”.
A short instrumental piece, ‘Touched’, follows, composed entirely by Ó Cíosóig. The disorientating interlude makes way for ‘To Here Knows When’, which features a thick, rumbling fog of instrumentation, accompanied by sounds that feel like the musical embodiment of the sun hitting the sea, glimmering with an effervescent quality.
One of the album’s most accessible tracks, ‘When You Sleep’, comes next, although this doesn’t make the song any less impressive. The track is one of the band’s most lyrically potent, capturing the daze of falling in love, with Shields manipulating and layering his voice to sound as though a man and woman are singing to each other. Opening with the lines, “When I look at you/ Oh, but I don’t know what’s real,” the song feels like a time capsule, cracked open to reveal the hazy memories of first loves and mistrust.
Shields frequently modulates his vocals, giving the songs an androgynous sound. However, these words often melt into the soundscape, becoming hard to decipher as whirring guitars and industrial noises build around them. Yet this doesn’t pose an issue, as the band explores texture with such vivacity and dynamism that the instruments take on emotions and feelings of their own.
On ‘I Only Said’, the repetitive guitar screeches almost like the sound of someone crying, and on ‘Come in Alone’, the instrument follows a similar precedent, with Ó Cíosóig’s drums mirroring the opening beats of ‘Only Shallow’. However, the song doesn’t merely feel like offcuts of previous tracks pieced together; rather, it stands strong as its own expressive piece.
The ballad-like ‘Sometimes’ is an essential cut from Loveless. The moody, dark guitars wash over the listener with determinism, propelled by Ó Cíosóig’s steady drums. It’s one of the album’s most melancholic tracks, aided by gentle organs which float through the fuzzy riffs. With words such as “Close my eyes, feel me now/ I don’t know how you could not love me now,” ‘Sometimes’ is basically perfect.
The continued themes of love and uncertainty appear in ‘Blown a Wish’, which sees Butcher describe a deteriorating relationship, where “Once in love/I’ll be the death of you”. Although the track has a doomed sentiment, it’s one of the album’s happier-sounding moments, with Butcher’s uplifting voice contrasting the ill-fated lyrics.
The abrasion picks up on ‘What You Want’, which eventually slows to make way for an effortless segue into ‘Soon’. With its breakbeat drums and upbeat layers of instruments, it’s arguably one of the album’s best moments, smothering the listener in cyclical rhythms that never seem to tire.
Not only is Loveless a feat of the shoegaze genre, but it totally transformed the course of alternative rock. It defined the 1990s, setting the decade up for a period of intense innovation. From the opening heaver hitter of ‘Only Shallow’ to the gentle (well – as gentle as MBV can get) fuzzy ballad of ‘Sometimes’, Loveless is My Bloody Valentine at their absolute peak.