My Bloody Valentine

Certain Songs #1220: My Bloody Valentine – “In Another Way”

May 25, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: m v b
Year: 2013

In 1992, My Bloody Valentine left Creation records — whom they were rumoured to have bankrupted — signed with Island, built a home studio and went to work on the follow-up to Loveless.

Then some time passed. We all got older, though some of us got younger than that now.

In 2003, over a decade after Loveless — whose already stellar reputation had ossified into “all time great” at least partially because there hadn’t been a follow-up — Kevin Shields put out some new music as part of the soundtrack to Lost in Translation. But it wasn’t My Bloody Valentine, so it only counted to a certain extent.

Certain Songs #1219: My Bloody Valentine – “Soon”

May 24, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Loveless
Year: 1991

Then again, I kept playing the puzzling Loveless in order to get to its final song, the glorious mesmerizing “Soon,” which ended the album on a massive high.

One of those songs that get you lost in time and space, “Soon” almost defies any kind of musical analysis, but then, I wouldn’t have anything to write about, now would I?

Certain Songs #1218: My Bloody Valentine – “To Here Knows When”

May 23, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Loveless
Year: 1991

Of course, if Loveless was all bombs bursting in air all of the time, then it probably would have gotten tedious, no matter how unprecedented those bombs happened to be.

That’s why Loveless also featured a few songs that were far more atmospheric than the bangers that mostly dominated it. Of course, “atmospheric” is a relative term on a record that is dominated by tidal waves of massed sound, which is why “To Here Knows When” almost trails off into the ambient realm.

Certain Songs #1217: My Bloody Valentine – “Only Shallow”

May 22, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Loveless
Year: 1991

Two years in the making, and totally and completely obsessed over by Kevin Shields until every single ounce of spontaneity had been wringed from every microsecond of music, Loveless is a record that took me some time to love as much as I respected.

Usually, I like my rock ‘n’ roll a tad more human than the unearthly sounds that made up the vast majority of Loveless, so while I appreciated all of the different guitar sounds that Shields had uncovered, I’ll admit to never being quite as whelmed — much less overwhelmed — as the rest of the known universe.

Certain Songs #1216: My Bloody Valentine – “Sueisfine”

May 21, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Isn’t Anything
Year: 1988

The other song that brought me into Isn’t Anything was perhaps the the most conventional song on the album: the short sharp shocking buzzsaw of “Sueisfine,” which — if you didn’t pay that close attention — could almost be mistaken for something you’d actually heard before.

But of course, with drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig never quite committing to a straight out punk beat, or finishing his snare rolls where you would expect them to, Kevin Shields has plenty of room to pile on shiny guitars, noisy guitars and hazy guitars, all swathed in a boatload of distortion and feedback.

Certain Songs #1215: My Bloody Valentine – “Lose My Breath”

May 20, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Isn’t Anything
Year: 1988

While it is of course a matter of holy writ that Loveless is My Bloody Valentine’s classic, and one of the most influential records of all-time, it didn’t entirely come out of nowhere. Which is one of many reasons to not sleep on its predecessor, 1988’s Isn’t Anything.

After a few singles and EPs, Kevin Shields figured out his guitar shit, and My Bloody Valentine found a sound that wasn’t like anybody else’s. And in 1988 that sound freaked me the fuck out. What even was this?

22 Musical Moments To Die For

November 14, 2008 by Jim Connelly

You can talk about genres, artists, albums, or even songs, but sometimes what keeps us coming back to music is the discovery of the transcendent musical moment. For me, “the moment” is the part of the song that fully and utterly engages me; the reason that I keep coming back to it.

I’m not necessarily talking about hooks here, because the purpose of a hook is the draw you into a song. I’m really talking more about traps: the part of a song that that keeps you there.

The is the fourth in a series. The first one had 25, the second one has 24, the third one had 23.

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Every single moment I’ve listed below kills me single every time I hear it.

Oh, and this isn’t in any kind of order, despite the numbering.