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Emperor My Bloody Valentine's New Clothes

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oh-em-gee. . . My Bloody Valentine. Is releasing. A. New. Record! The first since a little release called Loveless that you may or may not have heard of. No, really, it’s a classic! Loveless? Does the word 'shoegazer' ring a bell? Blissful pop songs buried under layers of gorgeous feedback? Yes, that one! Anyway the purveyors of polyphony are back. I mean, seriously, they’ve had, what, SIXTEEN years to come up with something even more astounding than Loveless... which, as we’ve said, was pretty close to perfect. And while My Bloody Valentine didn't start the shoegazer scene, they arguably defined it with Loveless. None of the others (Slowdive, Ride, Curve, Cocteau Twins) could approach the album for sheer density, and so the scene slowly drifted into the background like so much feedback. The record that made My Bloody Valentine was also their undoing.


And then, all of a sudden, as if from the ashes, there appears Kevin Shields: he shuffles off the brittle coils of a life churning out remixes and overdubs to make an announcement: My Bloody Valentine are reuniting. We at Duck & Cover shit our collective trousers.


Last month Shields announced My Bloody Valentine are back, and they have this new record that they’re working on that will be brilliant and new and save music and . . .what? I’m sorry, what was that, Mr. Shields?


"[The new album is] going to be this 96/97 half-finished record finished, and then a compilation of stuff we did before that in 1993–94, and a little bit of new stuff. . . "(Pitchfork, November 2007).


So. You’re telling me that the material on this record is from 1993. Nineteen ninety THREE?? Like early ‘93, or late ‘93? What's the difference? Well, maybe it makes a difference to ME. Anyway, WTF? Has Kevin Shields and co just been sitting on this magical world changing record for the past 14 years? I mean, really? Were we just not ready for the genius that is MBV, or have sales of the back catalogue slowed to a trickle?


The idea that a genre-defining band can come out of retirement with a moderate amount of hoo-ha, but then offer us a FOURTEEN-year-old record . . . Well, I guess it could be like Brian Wilson and Smile, but I kinda doubt it. I don’t even know that there is a parallel to adequately illustrate the transcendent lameness of this nonsense.


Oh wait. Yes I do.

















Of course we realize that when it does arrive, it will probably be fantastic. But hey, it's not our job to be right; it's only our job to be opinionated.

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