Loveless… It most certainly isn’t

Review: My Bloody Valentine – Loveless (remastered)

Published on May 4th, 2012 | Jonny Abrams

There really isn’t all that much to say about the effect of this remastering process that we didn’t touch upon in our review of the remastered Isn’t Anything, so what else to do but enjoy it all anew (with a nice, er, glass of wine for subjectivity’s sake) and see if this technological touching up can yield any new sort of reaction?

It certainly can, and as much is evident the moment “Only Shallow” comes beasting in, as if halfway through, with renewed impact by dint of a beefier bottom end and bolder complexion altogether. That’s all that was needed, because the existing qualities of Kevin Shields’s golden, swirling, wailing guitar maelstrom and Bilinda Butcher’s ethereal, almost detached vocal do the rest of the work once prompted.

“Loomer” trips balls more vividly than ever before, “Touched” still defies explanation as to how anyone could have possibly conjured such spellbinding noise, while a magnificently invigorated “To Here Knows When” all of a sudden strikes as sounding like someone hoovering Screamadelica, actually hoovering the music itself so that it wavers and distorts in the suction without quite disappearing into the vacuum. And if you think that doesn’t make sense, just listen to the song itself (which anyone reading likely has, many times, but still…).

My Bloody Valentine… Great band, rubbish Mount Rushmore impersonators

“When You Sleep” returns Loveless to something approaching normalcy; it’s a lovely little pop tune when you mentally undress it, but of course it is caked in distortion and sealed with a kiss courtesy of that instantly winning keyboard lick, another of which appears – using the same sound, no less – in “I Only Said”, which may point towards ‘hypnotic drone’ on the MBV compass but still has some kind of grounding in lo-fi grunge-pop. In fact, let’s call it 50-50 in this case.

Then we have the mid-period-Beatles-travelling-through-time-on-ketamine of “Come in Alone”, the Smashing Pumpkins-prompting metallic slow-burning of “Sometimes”, the dizzying, AM-radio-spiked-with-strong-hallucinogen ingenuity of “Blown a Wish”, the almost tossed-off brilliance of “What You Want” (amusingly prolonged flute-loop outro still intact)…and of course, bigger and brighter than ever…

Yes, yes, yes, this rocks! There’s been enough written about this album already, so let’s just get on with the quail-doling. No great surprises, then…

Rocksucker says: Five Quails out of Five!

a quail a quail a quail a quail a quail

The remastered Loveless will be released on 7th May through Sony. For more information, please visit www.mybloodyvalentine.net

My Bloody Valentine - Loveless

Click here to read Rocksucker’s review of the remastered Isn’t Anything and here to read our review of EPs & Rarities 1988-1991!

Artists: my bloody valentine

About the Author

Jonny Abrams Editor of Rocksucker and the website's founder, Jonny is passionate about the music he listens to, both good and bad, as well as interviewing his favourite musicians.