Customer Reviews

Loveless [Vinyl]

5 star:		(356)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I'm an unlikely admirer of this record. 51 years old. Taking Lipitor. Bifocals. But, I've spent the last two years or so listening to this CD at least once a week. It's also an unlikely CD to admire. Perfectly reasonable people with refined tastes can be bewildered, even frightened by it. It breaks most of the rules that are supposed to apply to rock music. Brian Eno famously referred to the "vagueness" of the music and that's dead right. But, all I can say is that it magically finds some system in my brain that I have in common with lizards and plays it like a cheap guitar. It's wonderful.

Where does one begin when it comes to describing this landmark album? Let's start with the general aesthetic. Imagine an album full of variations upon "Tomorrow Never Knows" via Sonic Youth and you might get an idea of what My Bloody Valentine is all about. Add some post-coital, halcyon-dazed vocals to the mix, warp the guitar sound with a healthy dose of gamma radiation and you've got yerself the best guitar album since Television's "Marquee Moon" hit in the mid-'70s. "Loveless" is one of those rare albums that managed to transcend its influences. In 1991, it was a distinct and compelling force within the incredibly stale medium of guitar rock. Guess what? It's still just as jaw-droppingly good twelve years down the road.

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!...

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.

EDIT: the release date for this 2-CD has yet been postponed to January 2011. The remastered release was initially scheduled for summer 2008, thus almost three years ago. What a disappointing management!

If you contemplate buying this old and not remastered version (yep, Rhino have re-released the same version during almost 20 years), you might be interested to know that a new, remastered version of "Loveless" will be released in the UK in August 2010; this new version will include a second cd. The starting price is the same as the old version...

This is the type of album that I can live with forever. It grows on you with each listen wether it's next week, or a decade from now! I cannot compare to Heaven_17's review since that person has described this album flawlessly. But I would like to even out the unfair reviews given by clueless reviewer such as this:

POSTED BY PAPER

"I bought this album because of all the Smashing Pumpkins similarities MBV receives, but this is no where near the quality of Smashing Pumpkins, nor does it sound like them. The vocals are so muted that you can't hear a word. The instrumentation is muted and overbearing, bordering noise, with little structure and no emotion. I might not understand why people think this album is good, maybe because i can't understand where the music is beneath the noise. Just buy SP's Siamese Dream if you want good music. They have far better vocal and guitar talent."

Mistake number 1 - Do NOT compare MBV to the Smashing Pumpkins.

Mistake number 2 - Vocals are muted for a good reason.

Mistake number 3 - Paper has stated that it has no structure and emotion. Completely wrong.

Just a little warning for people that have not heard "Loveless" yet. Don't expect to jump right into this album thinking that it will automatically hook you. Unlike most music today, this album has layers, and hopefully with time you will be able to appreciate the deeper layer. G'day.

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....

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?

I came to Bloody Valentine a little late in the game (late 90's) and I wasn't too enamoured with their other works. In fact, I had a difficult time getting into this album. I think this album is like one of those 3D puzzles where you really have to relax your eyes, or better yet, don't try and find the picture you're supposed to be looking for. Relax your brain, turn off your active listening, and then put this album on repeat. I found that in order to really get the initial experience of this album it should be on very low volume while your doing other "brainy" things. After a few hours of writing heady material, solving the world's problems, or replacing the brake pads on your car, somehow everything about Loveless will magically "click". Once I figured out how to introduce this album to people I have yet to have anyone call me back and tell me "they don't get it".

"Loveless" is, simply, an album without precedent or rival. The opening seconds of "Only Shallow" are among pop music's finest moments. An anxious drum beat is enveloped by an extraterrestrial guitar figure that balloons and cascades over an impossibly dense soundscape. If you listen closely, you can hear a monumental bassline and a second guitar softly complementing Kevin Shields's contorted lead. Such bizarre and phenomenally beautiful sounds you will never hear on another record; Shields and rhythm guitarist Bilinda Butcher push the guitar to its limits, eschewing all that is traditional about the instrument in favor of symphonic string-bending that sounds wonderfully akin to an orchestra playing on the edge of the musical universe. "Loveless" is the sound of returning to a musical utopia that you knew at some point, perhaps before birth, but have forgotten over the years--its sublime melodies, albeit bizarre and exotic, are strangely familiar and touching even after the first listen. The glittering intro to "To Here Knows When" is the sound of heaven descending towards earth and the fragile lead melody of "What You Want," almost completely buried beneath benignly heavy guitar, is the sound of delicate love wonderously hanging by a thread. At various point throughout, "Loveless" resembles the ocean, the sky, the clouds, and the heart--its sounds are like angular figures that can be endlessly reconstructed into an assortment of unique parts imbued with penetrating romantic and utopian values. The conflict between heaviness and beauty magnifies the universality of the melodies and harmonies, as the crunch of the guitars expands the delicacy of the songs while never crushing their impeccable exquisiteness and craftsmanship. And just when you think that the gloriously droning six-strings might be going over the edge, Shields's and Butcher's ethereal voices fly to the rescue. Their heavenly pipes deliver indiscernable lyrics that nevertheless contain so much more emotion than conventionally-delivered words--Shields's alien intonations on "Sometimes" craft a feeling of melancholic love that surpasses anything done by any emotional or love-stricken band. And that is the paradox of "Loveless": it touches your most intimate realms with a foreign hand. It finds paradise in blurry realms where nothing is real and yet everything is vital. This is the very sound of love and lament intertwined; this is the very symphony dedicated to unsurpassable beauty.

i still have issues with this album, and it's really too much to listen to more than a couple times a week. but i discovered one night that to really appreciate this album, you have to let go. it's like looking at one of those "magic eye" pictures. if you try to focus on the music, there's nothing there. listen to this album on headphones in complete darkness...right before you go to sleep, or whenever you're feeling extremely tired and your brain is fuzzy. the reward for being able to let go, is a sudden control like i haven't had with any other music. i feel like i am nearly hallucinating while listening. the best way to describe the feeling is being inside a three-dimensional impressionist painting (a very abstract Monet) that you are climbing around in. it's warm and humid, but not too much so. and it's constantly changing. and there's so much to the music that you feel like you have control over what you're seeing.

good luck...