Cathedral!

Glyph 32 Comments

Last night, Irish rock band My Bloody Valentine released the long-awaited follow-up to their classic 1991 album Loveless. There’s not much to say about Loveless that hasn’t been said already; the mighty sonic union of the Cocteau Twins’ lovely celestial dreams and the Jesus and Mary Chain’s more earthly (perhaps diabolical) white noise, Loveless detonated with such force that the scene which it helped define was swept away in the shockwave; it would be several years before anyone seriously attempted to work that vein again. The band themselves seemed unwilling or unable to explore further, retreating into decades of myth and rumor.

I’m not prepared to judge the new album; I am frankly still stunned it exists at all.

This is not about My Bloody Valentine, or Loveless, or the new album per se; this is about that sound. I’m not going to use the term here with which the British music press tagged these neo-psychedelic guitar bands and their descendants; it’s a stupid term, and we’re stuck with it, and I’ll use it elsewhere again; but it’s descriptively inadequate. “Noise pop” is better; maybe we could even go with “holocaust pop”, in tribute to an infamous segment of MBV concerts.

The linked Deerhunter videos are a sideways attempt to get at what I mean; the first describes it lyrically, the second sonically.

It’s the sound of confusion, disorientation, ego obliteration; of being subsumed and lost in something larger than yourself; the sound of, yes, bells and cathedrals; the sensations of heat and light, and synapses electrified with love.

Feel free to hold forth in comments about: HOLY CRAP, NEW MBV!!!; that sound, whatever that may be for you; or whatever strikes your fancy.

Glyph

Glyph is worse than some and better than others. He believes that life is just one damned thing after another, that only pop music can save us now, and that mercy is the mark of a great man (but he's just all right). Nothing he writes here should be taken as an indication that he knows anything about anything.

More Posts

32 Comments

  1. i’ve only listened through once, so no real comments yet, but dang the pricing on this was way off. almost 30 bucks for the cd including shipping to the us. 16 for the download – 24/96 is nice and all if mostly glitter – is kinda insane.

    on the other hand, ZOMG NEW MBV so yeah.

    • OK, I said I wasn’t gonna do this so soon, but here’s my thumbnail of m b v so far (and I got the download as part of the LP/CD package).

      Of the 9 songs, there are 2: “is this and yes”, and “nothing is”, that strike me as overlong; they’re fragments that would have worked well enough as interstices, of the kind all over Loveless, but just don’t have enough going on here to justify their length.

      (Also, “nothing is” has that “train” beat that always reminds me of this.)

      So that leaves 7 real “songs”. Eh, I guess that’s OK.

      In this DeRogatis piece, Shields says of Loveless:

      “It was influenced a little bit too much by Ecstasy culture,” Shields said. “A lot of the melodies and hook lines that come from the instruments are extremely dinky and toylike. For me, that was the aftereffects of experiencing too much Ecstasy.”

      While Shields is being critical here, he nails one aspect of what makes Loveless work; for all the disorienting things it does with volume and arrangements and emergent harmonics, there are always, always these nagging, repetitive music-box melodies/hooks, of the kind that MDMA seems to facilitate (so I’ve heard). And these melodies/hooks, even though they often zig where you’d expect a zag, give you something to hold onto in the swells.

      m b v definitely seems lighter on those hooks. Whether he’s cleaned up his act chemically, or that was an intentional choice to “fix” something he didn’t like, or whether he’s just currently low on melodies/hooks (happens to every songwriter, either temporarily or permanently) I dunno.

      But there’s some neat stuff here all the same. Do you know the name of that “phasing doppler effect” in “wonder 2” that sounds like jets in the sky or fireworks, inverting on themselves (I know, I know, but this is MBV, so hopefully that makes sense)? I’ve heard that effect used on other records (New Order uses it on a song on Technique.)

      • Well, we picked the album up last night. Downloaded the songs, the CD will arrive in March or something.

        The first time I listened to Loveless, I was in a car (I immediately ejected the CD from force of habit because it sounded exactly like when my tape player was eating the tape). I wasn’t just listening to the album, I was listening to the album *AND* driving.

        I will have to listen to the new album when I’m listening to the new album *AND* something else. I just need to figure out what I want the something else to be.

        • it sounded exactly like when my tape player was eating the tape

          From the video up top…I remember cassette cathedral.

          My parents came into my bedroom where my teenaged self was listening to “Psychocandy”, and asked if something was wrong with my stereo.

          • This is one of the better copies of it I’ve seen: The “holocaust section” of “You Made Me Realise”. All THIRTY MINUTES of it.

            http://youtu.be/yqUTUacZoC4

            Not only is the audio recording completely overwhelmed to a complete white noise roar (as all would be), the video electronics (and/or the videographer) appear to be vibrating with the sheer force of sound.

            If you ever get a chance, see them.

            But bring good, good earplugs – even with those, there was a point during this part when I was covering my ears with my hands, and kneeling/crouching down so as to use the bodies of those around me as sound baffles.

          • I just listened to the 30 minute “You Make Me Realise”. That is fantastic, though I think, even through a computer and headphones, it took a physical toll on me.

            I do believe MBV has shot up to the top of the list of ‘Bands I really want to see’. (Granted, I’ve checked off a bunch, so that list is most just MBV and Pavement… and I don’t know if I want to see Pavement now. I want to see 1992 Pavement.)

          • Dude, I’ve seen Pavement a few times, back in the day and a couple years ago at the Matador thingy. Don’t bother. They don’t care, why should you? And I say this as someone who loved the first record or two, and liked most of the rest (aside from Wowee Zowee, which I never was able to get into).

            But MBV – it’s not just a concert, it’s an experience. The single loudest sound – not just concert, but sound, I have ever heard in my entire life. It’s simultaneously uncomfortable, and beautiful, and bowel-liquefying, and meditative, and…just completely unlike anything else. The sensory overload itself produces altered states of consciousness. I’ve seen plenty of loud shows (JAMC, Ministry, SY, Dino Jr.) and none are in the same ballpark. Not even close.

            List of bands I still want to see, and would travel to do so, if they somehow reformed:

            Spacemen 3 (would accept just Sonic Boom & J. Spaceman)
            Smiths (would accept just Morrissey & Marr)

            If Stone Roses’ reunion tour came close enough I’d go, but wouldn’t travel far – seen/heard enough to suspect Brown might be a total loss voice-wise.

            MAYBE Galaxie 500, but I saw Dean & Britta do a full G500 set pretty recently, and they used some players that replicated G500’s sound pretty closely, so I dunno how far I’d travel for it.

            I’ve checked most of the rest off.

            That’s sort of sad, actually.

          • what glyph said. i’ve heard some very obnoxiously loud stuff before but you made me realise at roseland in ’08 was bowel churning shit that drove people away in terror. even the cops outside were kinda freaked out. we left with about five minutes to go as the wife was starting to not feel great.

            you could still hear it two blocks away.

          • That’s the thing…you say “bowel-liquefying/churning” and ppl think you are being hyperbolic. But you’re not. There were a few brief moments, where I really did – no lie – wonder if I was gonna have to make a beeline for the bathroom. So I get how yr wife could feel not great.

            You just feel your insides shift…dunno if it’s the actual vibrations/soundwaves themselves, acting on your digestive tract and physically pulverizing your dinner (maybe the vibrations feel like peristaltic motion); or if it’s an evolutionary, involuntary instinctive mental response to the loudness and disorienting strangeness of the sound – like your lizard brain is going “holy crap, that volcano is blowing up, and that fiery asteroid is heading straight for us!”

            I know it doesn’t sound like it, but this is still a recommendation.

      • “Do you know the name of that “phasing doppler effect” in “wonder 2″ that sounds like jets in the sky or fireworks, inverting on themselves (I know, I know, but this is MBV, so hopefully that makes sense)?”

        it’s a flange/phaser effect with a lot of autopanning going on. i don’t know that it has a name as such – a guitarist might.

        • When I hear “panning” I think of Left-Right spatial movement or placement(for ex. guitars panned hard right, vocals hard left – I think CCR did this sometimes, IIRC).

          What it SOUNDS like it’s doing, spatially, is not going L-R, but “flipping head over heels” up-down (or like I said, sort of a doppler effect, rising then falling).

          No guitars, but if you listen at 3:58 here, this effect is what I mean:

          http://youtu.be/wRLAlvS5w7Y

          Not trying to be a pain; just generally always wondered what that effect is called.

          • Yeah, I just called up “Susie Q”, and CCR was what I was thinking of. I think I first noticed it when I had a speaker out in my car and wondered where the heck all the vox had gone.

          • Sounds like a flanger to me.

            A phaser makes a wave sound like that, but the operation of the wave-form is completely different and the controls are much different; odd, because they have a very similar sound.

            One of the useful aspects of a flanger is the feedback control. It’s an ultra-high end filter, maybe below “presence” or “air.”
            This is what a flanger sounds like with the depth all the way down and the feedback all the way up (or thereabouts).

          • Will H. – have you ever listened to Loveless? As a guitar guy (we’ve seen the pictures of the collection!), would love to hear yr thoughts on it.

          • Haven’t heard it.
            I’ve heard MBV, and I think there’s some good potential there. I wasn’t particularly impressed with their earlier material.
            That said, “No Easy Way Out” is a fantastic song. I think it was from an EP that was released as a bonus track later.
            I’ve seen one of their popular videos, and it looked like the updated old thing to me. I was impressed by the guy playing an Epi ES-335. That’s a statement. You don’t pick up one of those things by accident.
            I think they should be plenty interesting in future days. They’ve got a good sound.

            I wish I was more familiar where i could give better opinion.
            But I’m thinking that their best work is ahead. And it’s probably going to take one of two paths– it’s either going to be the ‘grand idea’ (e.g. 2112, et al.) or it’s going to be a ‘back to basics’ type of thing.
            I think it would work out best with this band with the back to basics dynamic.

          • “But I’m thinking that their best work is ahead.”

            man, there’s against the grain thinking and there’s against the grain thinking. 🙂

          • Will H. – based on the track name, I think you may be thinking of the somewhat-similarly-named band “Bullet For My Valentine”. It’s ok, I have seen this happen before. 🙂

            Check yr e-mail later today…

          • Yeah, I suppose I’ve reached that age where I can no longer tell the different bands apart.

            In other news, Get off my lawn!

          • &btw, try this as a good e-mail address:
            willh2071 at the gmail

          • Sent.

            Yeah, I had just seen someone over at the AV Club make that same mixup, and looking at the bandnames I can see how that happens (ya got a “My”, a “Valentine”, and either a “Bloody” or a “Bullet”, which are not all that far apart).

            It’s not an age thing, don’t worry. 🙂

  2. Also, in the second video (“Vox Celeste”) – anybody have any idea what the repeated shots of a digital clock reading “5:27 ” are supposed to represent?

    The rest of the video makes me think of nuclear explosion/radiation – the Trinity test took place, according to wikipedia, at 5:29.

    That’s close enough for me, unless anyone has a better idea?

    • According to wikipedia

      “At 05:29:21 (plus or minus 2 seconds)[34] local time (Mountain War Time), the device exploded with an energy equivalent to around 20 kilotons of TNT (90 TJ). ”

      So, yeah, it could be Trinity.

      • I actually like this video just as well (and I think the sound may be a little better) but I was afraid it might give people seizures, there’s a lot of strobing:

        http://youtu.be/0x5thZloS90

        It just hurtles forward, the way the song does.

  3. so far i think i like “if i am” and the closer the best. it’s good, it’s what i expected, but not entirely.

    • Am I being totally crazy to hope that this album is mainly intended to release the pressure, and now that “Loveless” has been followed up on and it was by no means a disaster, he can just start making a record every cpl yrs?

      Or will we be discussing the next one from our rocking (“REALLY rocking, sonny! You young whippersnappers have no idea what ‘rocking’ even is!”) chairs on the porch of The League of Retired Gentlemen?

      I like “in another way”, and I’m feeling that closer too. I was talking to a friend recently how awesome it was to end Loveless with “Soon”, dropping it all casual-like.

      “Hey, I just reinvented rock and I gotta bail, but here’s how to reinvent dance too…let me know how that works out…”

      • i think that’s a lovely dream. maybe? if this is particularly successful – and i believe it probably has been, pricing and website issues included – it could be an impetus to keep putting out stuff. and touring, of course.

          • Well, that “Death Star” one was pretty great.

            Still, the Obama administration brought us the new MBV.

            A grateful nation considers changing the law so he can run for a third term.

            (No politics).

Comments are closed.