Wednesday, May 19, 2010

#219: Loveless- My Bloody Valentine

Listened to: MP3

Loveless, the second album by My Bloody Valentine, kicks off with “Only Shallow”, a track that shows where The Smashing Pumpkins stole their style from. Heavy swirling guitars that would make Jonny Greenwood jealous, and buried vocals that just become another instrument, this is the kind of track Buffy would dance to at The Bronze. Here, ladies and gentlemen, is a piece of history. You are witnessing the big bang of 90’s alternative rock.

The album continues with track after track of this kind of music, which quite frankly isn’t my favorite, but hey, it’s a classic album, and a staple of it’s genre. The songs all seem to blend together stylistically, quite frankly, and it would be a disservice to the record to sit and dissect it, and I don’t actually love it or hate it enough to go on for pages. It’s a great album of music I don’t particularly enjoy, if that makes sense. Some of the tracks, like “To Here Knows When” are over-blown and overly long. So I do encourage you to listen to it. Maybe you’ll never listen to it more than once, but if for nothing else but to see where Radiohead, Muse, The Smashing Pumpkins, and most other lilting voiced, swirling guitar bands got their sound from, Loveless should be given a listen.

So, on the 500 list in undoubtedly stays, despite my not terribly much enjoying it. It’s not my cup of tea, though I will admit certain tracks, like “When You Sleep” and “I Only Said” were enjoyable. Maybe I’ll get Nick Young to come back and explain the album’s greatness better, but for now, let me say it’s worth listening to for the significance, if not so much the music.

-Mike

See you next for #405: Rid Of Me by PJ Harvey.

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