This is difficult for me. To actually put to words my deep love and appreciation for their music is something I have never done before. If we can just backtrack here for a little bit, I was four when Loveless came out. I never even heard about these guys until I was about twenty. All I knew was, when I got into music, I needed to own Loveless, regardless of whether I actually turned out liking it or not. So I picked it up, and yeah, it was as great as everyone said it was. I grabbed the rest of their discography before the year was over. This just needed to be said, to understand where I'm at in my life. I'm not here to write about Loveless. Yes, it is without even trying in my top five of all time. Yes, it is monumental. Yes it is so critically acclaimed and widely loved all around the world. Yes, it is most likely THE definitive shoegaze album, spawning tons of imitators. However, it is not so much that mbv pales in comparison. In fact, if you listened to mbv with that in mind, you probably missed it. You were probably one of those assholes. So let's backtrack again so we can move forward. As a guy in my late twenties I have been around the shoegaze block. I know what you"re supposed to know about the who's who and the what not's (probably more than you're supposed to because I am a total geek.) My Bloody Valentine, over the span of a couple of years, are not just "some shoegaze band," they are now simply one of my favorite bands. So I am just going about my business last year and the news finds its way to me, "Kevin Shields: We have finished mastering the new album." Hold up. What? And then one fateful Saturday in February my twitter just blew. the. fuck. up. It's on everyone's review of this album, or best of recap, but it is, because, it is important. Where were you when MBV dropped the bomb that they would release their new album later that night? This was an event, and I was a part in it.
You know what happened next. The enormous amount of traffic caused their webpage to completely melt down. I think I sat there for about two hours after the said "release" constantly hitting refresh, just hoping maybe I would be one of the lucky ones that got in. I awoke the next morning EARLY. The website was fixed late in the night. The whole world had already heard it. The individual tracks were already on Youtube. People were saying it was either amazing or it sucked. I'm not kidding. It was either amazing... or it sucked? People are such assholes sometimes. I'm reminded of that Louis C.K. joke about the guy on the airplane who is excited about having WiFi on his flight for the first time, as this was a very new thing the airline was offering. As the flight progresses, they have some difficulties with it and the WiFi ends up getting turned off. And Louis hears the guy say, "Well this is fuckin' bullshit!" How can you be upset about something you didn't even know existed a few hours ago? And here we are, almost a year later. As March came around, I swear it seemed like everyone had forgotten about it. I am totally guilty of this, like, I am not excluding myself from this, but it is horrifying, our attention spans, how the void of new music is filled and no matter how filling it is we are never, ever satisfied. It is immediately old news now because it is no longer new. But not mbv, at least for me. I was caught in it. I would obsess over a certain song for a while, trying to get every last drop from it. I would listen with headphones, without headphones, making sure there wasn't a noise I missed. All I can say is that it is so unbelievably good. It is everything I wanted in a new MBV album and more. It's pointless to delve deep into each song and the reasons why I like it so much, because this is an album's album. This is something I listen to front to back each time because there is not a wasted second. I say all that to say this, I didn't know how much I needed new music from My Bloody Valentine until they decided they needed to release new music. It's one of those things that, they could have easily gotten away with. Sure, new music is nice, but why risk it when you're on top, to have a million nerds critique every second of it and constantly compare it to your finest work? I mean, the reuniting and new tour was nice enough, you know?
I never thought I would get to write about a new My Bloody Valentine album. I believe it stands tall and proud next to the rest of their discography and even outshines its predecessor at times. This album is even more important and more special to me, because after almost thirty years of MBV, I have an album that I can truly call my own.
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