Revolver: BRIAN BOYDon music
TODAY is the day of the re-release/re-master/ re-package of the only two My Bloody Valentine albums, Isn’t Anything and Loveless. The latter album comes wrapped in so many myths, half-truths, rumours and hugely extravagant critical praise it makes Smile seem like a Westlife album.
Four years ago, Loveless was voted the best Irish album of all time in a special Ticket poll; Pitchfork voted it “the best album of the 1990s”; Rolling Stone magazine have it as one of the best albums of all time and it regularly crops up as the best British guitar rock album of all time – an encomium which probably draws a wry smile from the Dublin band.
The received wisdom is that Loveless cost £250,000 to make (an absolute fortune in 1991); it almost bankrupted Creation Records and turned the label’s owner, Alan McGee, to drink. Such was the sonic advancement and beauty of the album that the band never released anything again.
Despite the fact that many first-time buyers return it to the record shop claiming that it is warped, its enigmatic aura has grown with each passing year. Brian Eno says Loveless set a new standard for pop music; The Smashing Pumpkins built their sound on it and Robert Smith freely admits: “it pisses all over The Cure”. And Radiohead’s OK Computer was written as a tribute to it. Allegedly.
No 48 minutes and 36 seconds of music could live up to all that has been breathlessly written about it. The truth is that Loveless was independent music’s first meme – an Act of Faith for the indie community with all deviation from unquestioning critical praise regarded as heretical.
It is okay not to like Loveless. It is okay to disregard the musos and all the egg-head analyses of its “staggering sonic excellence”. It’s okay to view it as “unlistenable”. Loveless is like a Fellini film — despite the halo, you can make your own mind up and not be a lesser person on the basis of the decision you make.
Before the villagers come at me with burning torches, personally I find Loveless to be a magnificent album – a coruscating work that was responsible for a vertical shift in how a genre of music was recorded and produced.
But the problem with today’s re-release is that most of the praise that engulfs the album emphasises how “ahead of its time” it was.
In 1991 Loveless had the brilliant shock of the new and the reverence accorded to it was appropriate. But, 21 years later, how will a 21-year-old react to an album that everyone says is one of the best ever? Without getting too historicist about it, there is simply no way Loveless can have the same impact on today’s generation as it did back in 1991. Other bands have run with the My Bloody Valentine ball (to greater commercial success).
And how much of the album’s importance is down to the fact that at the time of its release people seriously considered The Wonder Stuff to be among the best bands in the world?
That said, Loveless will probably chart higher this time around than it did on its initial release, when it got to No 24 on the UK album charts and then disappeared; it never even charted in the US. The sales this time will be generated by the myth that surrounds it, and the accumulated weight of critical endorsement over the past 21 years.
And, for what it’s worth, it’s the album in the shadows, Isn’t Anything, that is, all things considered, the better work. Apologies in advance.
* Kanye West is all over the new Justin Bieber album (due in June). Should be interesting.
* boniver otica.tumblr. com – Careful, it will make you ill.
bboyd@irishtimes.com
