Review
My Bloody Valentine
m b v

In what might be one of the longest case of collective breath holding since a band’s last previous album, My Bloody Valentine finally release the follow up to their landmark 1991 album, Loveless; and the single biggest question on many people’s minds has to be whether or not m b v is as good as the astoundingly enduring and growing legacy of its vaunted predecessor, and if that is not the biggest question in the person’s mind, then at least it lurks in the shadows of their conscious.

Cursory listening to m b v reveals what may be an album that has been intentionally divided into three musical movements by its creative team as My Bloody Valentine seems intent on easing people into something (but what that something is, probably is left up to Kevin Shields and has co-conspirators) while spending time with the record reveals an album that is assuredly all due to the band.

The first three songs pick up almost exactly where Loveless left off over twenty years ago all drenched in fuzzed out bliss with sly melodies and infectious hooks peeking out from the swirling guitars, and even the vocal performances sound like yesteryear; “She Found Now”, “Only Tomorrow”, and “Who Sees You” are all classic sounding My Bloody Valentine that sound big at low volumes and monstrous when played at an almost unbearable volume.

The second three songs still obviously hearken back to the My Bloody Valentine that people know and love while being pushing their stylistic creativity a nudge further from previous efforts from the four piece unit; “Is This And Yes” is a pretty sounding affair leaning heavily on an organ and the female vocals of Belinda Butcher while “If I Am” adds a healthy heaping of some dance beats to the organ and feminine wiles of Ms. Butcher as well as a guitar accompaniment and extra vocals courtesy of Mr. Shields, and the last of the second trilogy of songs seems to add a more pop feel than anything that I can easily recall (or remember for that matter) hearing from the band before now.

The final three tracks seemingly eschew all the normal modus operandi that we know My Bloody Valentine to employ slowly over their course as “In Another Way” is the closest to the other songs on m b v while “Nothing Is” sits as an instrumental that tantalizingly never moves from the pounding thrum that it is all the while you wait for the next part that never comes (almost as if this is an introduction or a bridge to a song that we will never hear the rest of and can only imagine how good it could have been); and then comes the dénouement of the album in the form of “Wonder 2” which is another exercise in frantic rhythms but upon closer listening shows that Shields and company are still burying the melodies down deep below the maelstrom of sound.

After extensive time spent with m b v, I feel left with the strange feeling that others have somewhat echoed in the ensuing tumult following the album’s release in that had this record been dropped somewhere in the 1992 to 1995 range, this might have been hailed as another triumph for My Bloody Valentine; instead this feels more like a transition piece that may have been better served as a series of EPs that presages a more cohesive body of work to fit onto an LP (though maybe it is a brilliantly sequenced work with the more immediate gratification of the early songs mixed with the more subtle and eventual gratification of the later songs), but m b v is still a welcome addition as well as return by My Bloody Valentine and with any luck a presage of things to come from this venerable four piece… that is if they do not go into complete hibernation again.