Weekly Artist Overview: My Bloody Valentine

My Bloody Valentine's moment was a very brief one, lasting about three years, largely under the radar of the mainstream. Their reputation rests primarily on two albums, Isn't Anything and Loveless, the latter work a masterpiece they never released a follow-up to.

They occupy a remarkably key position in the rock pantheon, however. As major explorers of sonic dissonance and the use of noise in music, they were a crucial extension of experiments that had occupied the Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, and Jesus and Mary Chain. My Bloody Valentine became the vanguard shoegaze band, but this distinction diminishes them. They also reshaped the entire noise-pop universe and helped influence the space-rock genre of the 90's. And then they were gone, practically without a trace.

Within their own sound they borrowed the lilting, ethereal vocals of the dream-pop Cocteau Twins and buried them under vast layers of noise and distortion, creating sonic dissonance with a majestic sound, undercut with a vague, elusive melancholy. Often their music had the otherworldly beauty good dream-pop provides; with layered, textured, processed, filtered guitar providing the ambience.

Their closest cousins were Jesus and Mary Chain, who sounded primitive and abrasive in comparison. All of this they fit into what ordinarily were easy-to-digest 3-minute songs, even if the songs themselves lacked any remote pretense at standard pop structure. What set them apart from other noise maestros is that they demonstrated that noise was something that went somewhere, not the end in itself. They struck an unusually emotional response in the hearts of their fans, few of whom are reticient about singing the band's praises.

 

Guitarist Kevin Shields was the band leader. Born May 23, 1963 in Queens New York, he and his family moved to Dublin, Ireland, when he was six years old. In 1983, after an uneventful teenagedom that included absorbing the music of the postpunk era, Shields got together with childhood friend and drummer Colm O'Ciosoig in a band called The Complex. Another schoolfriend of Shields' had been Liam O' Maonlai, who would go on to form Hothouse Flowers; O'Ciosoig had drummed with Maonlai as well. In 1984, Shields and O'Ciosoig were joined by vocalist Dave Conway and keyboardist Tina (who used no surname), and renamed themselves My Bloody Valentine, taking their name from a low-budget horror film.

They played some well regarded gigs in Dublin before taking the unusual route of relocating to Berlin in late 1984. Thir first release, the EP This Is Your Bloody Valentine appeared in 1985 on the Tycoon label. The EP drew very little notice; the band still remained unknown in England and most everywhere else. The EP is a premature offering; derivative of the gothic post-punk of The Birthday Party and the Cramps, it doesn't offer any clues to the directions the band would ultimately take. After subsequent gigs failed to scare up more interest, the band left Berlin, and settled in London.

In London, the band added bassist Debbie Googe to the lineup and recorded another EP, Geek! on Fever records in 1986. Geek! is also in a Birthday Party/Cramps vein. Like its predecessor, there wasn't anything particularly inspired about the recording; it sounds like the premature release of a second-tier goth group in its clumsy, formative stages. A more noteworthy release of the same time was Psychocandy by Jesus and Mary Chain, an album that blended the pop of the Beach Boys with the amped-up feedback of Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth. Shields and the band apparantly were profoundly affected by this album's appearance.

This new influence is evident right away in the third EP from My Bloody Valentine, The New Record by My Bloody Valentine, released on Kaleidoscope Sound records at the end of 1986. Gone is the overt goth posturings of the first two EP's; in its place is a newfound 60's pop melodicism, undercut with buzzsaw guitars. This EP is still far removed from the My Bloody Valentine sound, but it reveals the first steps in that direction; the noise-pop here seems received, but it also lends their music intrinsic interest for the first time. Vocalist Dave Conway's histrionics border on camp in places, but the foundation being laid by the musicians here lend this an historical value.

Also evident on that transitional EP was the influence of noise-pop trio the Primitives, fronted by Tracy Tracy. My Bloody Valentine's next EP appeared in 1987 on the Primitives' own label, Lazy records. At Lazy, My Bloody Valentine found an artistically nurturing environment, and in a bluster of activity, released two EP's, Sunny Sundae Smile and Strawberry Wine, and a mini-album, Ecstasy. Each of this series of releases is something of a development beyond the previous ones, as the band's new, noisy feedback experiments began to be reigned under control, and given shape. A bubblegum-esque airy melodicism is fully evident on Sunny Sundae Smile, lightening the dark shadows that had murked the band's music since their goth days.

This lightening of overall sound coupled with a more finely honed approach to the free form noise gave the band a similar career trajectory and listenability as Sonic Youth; by the time Ecstasy was released, the band had accumulated a sizable audience, and a growing buzz in the music press. The only thing that seemed out of place was vocalist Conway, whose stylings took attention away from the sonics, and was beginning to sound misplaced. At the end of 1987, Conway left the band and was replaced by vocalist/guitarist Bilinda Butcher, whose breathy vocals were the perfect foil for the reverb-laden roiling guitar experiments from Shields.

Butcher's arrival seemed to signal a complete reappraisal of sound from top to bottom, and My Bloody Valentine's sound underwent another major transformation. The band changed labels, and set up with Creation. It was with Creation in 1988 that the My Bloody Valentine legend really begins. Shields had developed into a studio perfectionist, making the most of his resources at Lazy, and using the studio as a primary componant of his sound. At Creation, with a better budget and better equipment, his studio mastery came to the fore. Two singles accompanied their first full-length album release in 1988; You Made Me Realise and Feed Me With Your Kiss. These singles were lauded by the British music press, who had finally caught up with the band and discovered their droning, swirling dreamscapes. Butcher's detached, soothing vocals were the magic missing ingredient; My Bloody Valentine became the beneficiaries of an enormous amount of press hype.

The new band lineup gelled perfectly, and despite Shields' reliance on the studio, the band also developed a reputation as an excellent live act, despite the fact that they barely moved while onstage, and did not look towards the audience or engage in stage patter. This introverted reticent style of perfomance was dubbed "shoegazing" by the music press, and shoegaze came to describe the new noise-pop that accompanied it. Once the name had been coined, dozens of bands were pigeonholed with it or aspired to it. Rising to prominance in the shoegaze movement just as My Bloody Valentine delivered the goods were bands like Ride, Lush, the Boo Radleys, Chapterhouse, and Slowdive. Shoegaze, thanks to the hype machine, became enormous for about two years, rivaling Madchester for attention; both would fizzle within three years, but would leave long shadows.

Isn't Anything appeared at the end of 1988 amid much clamor; the shoegaze scene was only beginning to gather steam, and My Bloody Valentine were at the forefront. The album gave face to the movement, and was something of a sensation, earning almost universal positive notice. It is here that the signature sound of My Bloody Valentine came into its own as the genre defining creation it was. "Feed Me With Your Kiss" one of the singles, is a statement of purpose; the mixed gender vocals blending with the multilayered guitar and metallic rhythm section into a sound that isn't aggressive, despite its fury. "All I Need" is given a light airiness that displays the subversive pop sense the band purposely inverted and submerged in haze. There is evidence of live band dynamics in "Soft as Snow (But Warm Inside)", with Deb Googe's funky bassline, and "You Never Should" displays Shield's tremelo and unconventional tuning. Butcher shines on the album, sexy on "Several Girls Galore", where her vocals are barely a whisper over the din, and on "Sueisfine" the lyric gradually transforms from "Sue is fine" to "Suicide" demonstrating the band's darker side, present since the goth days. On the whole, it is a remarkable album, one that spurred any number of imitators and yet towers over those imitators. For many bands, this would be considered a career achievement.

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