I don’t think My Bloody Valentine ever put out a song or album with the word ‘whatever’ in the title but I should be wrong. My Bloody Valentine are the ultimate Whatever Band. If you’re talking nano, they don’t even register. They’re so early 1990s the NME website doesn’t list any of their records for review, because they haven’t done anything since 1992.
Loveless was a blow-away of an album but if I have to put in an early call, I’d have to say the two EPs in between Isn’t Anything and Loveless (namely, the Tremolo and Glider EPs) sum the band up perfectly.
Some recent media attention paid to Kevin Shields (who since the band broke up has done Whatever, although he did guest a few times for Primal Scream. Or was that remixes?), mostly for his work on Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation soundtrack, may well re-ignite interest in the band, with the NME suggesting the band are back in the studio again. Coppola herself in a recent interview name-checked only Loveless, suggesting that she might well be a late fan.
Having listened to their early stuff (which featured a different vocalist altogether- I’m talking pre-“Feed Me With Your Kiss” here), maybe that’s a good thing. I never warmed to Isn’t Anything, I guess because at the time my girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend liked it. A friend of mine bought the Tremolo EP on vinyl. Speaking of holy shit! “Honey Power” is just the ultimate in your face!
You may find this hard to believe but I only listened to the Andy Weatherall remix of “Soon” (My Bloody Valentine’s seven-minute dance song) for the first time last week. I’d bought the Glider EP t-shirt (the tongue-kissing transfer) and always liked “Off Your Face”, and “Glider” itself – a sort of cross between what a tennis racquet-stringing factory must sound like and the noise of Ireland itself, but for some reason the Weatherall remix had always passed me by.
I just have so much to say about My Bloody Valentine I have to stop here for the moment. But how can I stop? You may think I’m coming out of left field with this one but having recently listened to Flying Nun’s excellent Straitjacket Fits compilation album, I just can’t. Straitjacket Fits supported My Bloody Valentine on their tour of Australia in – help me somebody – was it 1993? and, in the words of one reviewer, “wiped the floor” with the grandparents of shoegazing.
Straitjacket Fits’ lead singer Shayne Carter was a strange beast lyrically, but at least he had something to say. The night I saw these two bands play, at the Sydney Uni refectory building, Kevin Shields did not say a word the entire set, apart from the words he sort of hummed into the microphone during songs, words you could not in fact hear anyway. At the end he approached the microphone, thought better of it then left, just like Robert Smith when the Cure played the Entertainment Centre a few years later.
Straitjacket Fits were a spooky band, alarmingly intense. They had the kind of drumming my brother would describe as “spartan, militaristic”. At the same time, they encapsulated the spirit of a NZ buzz pop that managed to sound like Elvis Costello and MBV at the same time, right from their first release.
The highlight of their sporadic career was surely second album Melt, featuring classic songs like “Missing Presumed Drowned”, “Down In Splendour” and “Bad Note For a Heart”. Their bass player really freaked me out that night at the Refectory. I was right up the front (you know, because they were the support they had less of a crush). Man, they went off. That bass player drilled a stare straight at me for the entire set. I couldn’t move.
Shayne Carter didn’t exactly jump, like a young Tim Rogers – he prowled. Quite menacing really. But shoegazer nonetheless. Or, should I say, “Nu-gazer”.
I felt kind of sorry for My Bloody Valentine, in the end, when Loveless came out with “Soon” tacked on to the end of it, like the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut repackaged to include “Fools Gold”, never available on the original LP. I guess that’s why the EPs still do it for me, while the albums don’t, really.