MY BLOODY VALENTINE

Isn't Anything / EPs / Loveless

Sony, 2012

FAVORITES: "Sueisfine," "Moon Song," "Glider"

FLAVORS: Liquid nitrogen, MDMA, amniotic fluid

RATING:

The mythology of MBV is part and parcel of what makes the music so great. The fact that these records took so long to come out the first time, and that the reissues were delayed so many times, only adds to the mystique. My Bloody Valentine is magic, and Kevin Shields is a fucking warlock. He made some kind of deal with Satan or whomever, blessing him with a totally groundbreaking aural vision and the skills to make it real. But the shitty part of the bargain is that Satan cursed him with the most notorious case of perfectionism—bordering on OCD—since Brian Wilson.

Isn't Anything, the band's first proper full-length, is the one that the cool kids like to say is their favorite. It totally blew what was happening in 1988 out of the water. Shields and crew made beautiful, evil music. On the opener "Soft As Snow (But Warm Inside)," MBV finds a way to make guitars moan like they're actually having sex. Of the three reissues, this release has the most song-y songs. They're more tactile; they seem to make more sense, at least at first. His sing-song vocals betray the fucked-up subject matter (switching between "sueisfine" and "suicide"), and the wall of sound that emerges alternately invigorates and oppresses. It fucks with your head and makes you wonder why you would listen to anything else.

EP's (1988-1991) collects the material MBV released between their two major albums. Most of these songs have been out of print for decades, but widely circulated in shitty MP3 form. It's good to see these get serious attention. The songs here are both more punk than their other records, and also hint at the dreaminess to come. Glider was allegedly meant to be its own full-length, and "Feed Me With Your Kiss" is the most beautiful zombie cannibal love song ever written. It's on these songs that MBV most perfectly articulates the combination of power with autistic attention to sonic detail. The songs keep you at arm's length, riling you up but not offering release. It's blue balls in the best way. It's like embedding money into sidewalk cement; you want it, you know you can't have it. A handful of new songs absolutely justify the cost of admission and prove (perhaps unnecessarily) that everything Shields touches turns to gold.