Consider this: getting to see My Bloody Valentine perform songs from Loveless 35 years after that record’s release is the equivalent of getting to see The Beatles perform songs from Let It Be in 2005. Yeah, 2005, the year “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt spent 13 weeks in the Top 10 of the UK singles charts. Try not to dwell on how old that notion makes you feel and just think about how lucky that makes the crowd that gathered inside the Royal Albert Hall this past Friday night when the Irish shoegaze progenitors took the stage at London’s grandest venue in aid of The Teenage Cancer Trust.
Preceded by a spirited performance by the obviously deeply indebted CHVRCHES and, more movingly, by pre-recorded video segments highlighting the stories of several people who have had their young lives thrown into disarray by The Big C and found support through The Teenage Cancer Trust, it was in an atmosphere suffused with the inherent unpredictability and fragility of life that My Bloody Valentine took the stage.
Opening with “I Only Said” and “When You Sleep”, two of the most immediately catchy cuts from their 1991 masterpiece, it was astounding to hear these songs with Colm Ó Cíosóig’s muscular drumming; if there is one criticism that could be levelled at Loveless it’s that the drums can sound somewhat anemically drum-machiney. But here, and throughout the whole performance, the rhythm section of Ó Cíosóig and bassist, Debbie Googe, was as much of a revelation as the incredible wall of guitar noise that Kevin Shields and Bilinda Butcher summoned up.
At first the sound felt admittedly a little off, with Shields’ vocals and the iconic keyboard melody being almost completely submerged under gossamer waves of gliding guitar. I wondered whether a venue famous for its immaculate acoustics (at least since the installation in the late 1960s of the mushroom-like acoustic diffusers hanging from the domed ceiling) was being pushed beyond its limits by this most infamously loud band. But really it’s all part of the hypnotic effect of My Bloody Valentine’s sound; it’s woozy, punch-drunk and dreamy, whilst being overwhelmingly loud.
Foolishly, I left my earplugs at home, so I was a little nervous that I would suffer permanent damage, but I made it through unscathed, save for 12 hours of mild tinnitus, and am actually happy not to have dampened the experience in any way because I got to really appreciate the way additional “melodies” seemed to appear out of the way the waves of distortion interacted, and the manner in which Shields’ sonic architecture was in a kind of dialogue with the building it was being performed in. I thought I could hear the guitar part pinging around the hall during “new you” off the band’s 2013 comeback LP, adding another level of reverb (or maybe it was actually just another of the myriad effects conjured from the expansive pedal boards at the guitarists’ feet).
“You Never Should” followed and reminded me instantly that, whilst Loveless is often hailed as the band’s magnum opus, their 1988 debut, Isn’t Anything, is equally perfect. Those clattering drums, where the exuberant, barely-keeping-up fills make it sound like the songs are a rollercoaster constantly threatening to fly off the rails; that propulsive bass; the more prominent vocal melodies; and the guitars that, in a live setting, sound like jet engines roaring overhead; all of it makes their 80s material, which took up a significant proportion of the set, sound as vital today as it must have done nearly 40 years ago. “Nothing Much to Lose” and “Feed Me With Your Kiss” from the same album appeared later in the set and were simply extraordinary, creating a sound so big and thick you felt like you could dive into it, even whilst the songs themselves sounded like they were careening down a hill.
One song each from the Tremolo and Glider EPs, “Honey Power” and “Off Your Face” respectively, highlighted the immediate pop songcraft that characterised the band’s earlier work whilst also showcasing their ability to disorientate and enthrall with the strange shapes the guitar parts twist themselves into. Case in point being the latter’s effects-laden acoustic guitar approximating the sound of a hundred zithers being played simultaneously.
Songs from the You Made Me Realise EP (also released in 1988) were wonderful highlights: the incredibly blissful yet melancholic, quiet-loud dynamics of “Cigarette in Your Bed”; the absolute noise terrorism of “Thorn”; and “Slow”, the most explicit paean to sex in the MBV discography, which also happens to sound like a sunny pop song being torn apart in a wind tunnel.
Curiously, the band’s 2013 comeback album, m b v felt somewhat underrepresented, although “only tomorrow” was an undeniable highlight of the evening. It feels like a magic trick that something this loud and noisy could be this transcendentally beautiful. This is true wall of noise of stuff, although I imagine that if Phil Spector were alive to hear it, he would have been forced to clarify that he didn’t mean quite this much noise. Bilinda’s ethereal rising vocals and Shield’s extended undulating solo combined to stunning effect, reminding us that what makes My Bloody Valentine special is their ability to combine unique sonic textures with truly indelible melodies.
Loveless is the apotheosis of this approach, and rightly accounts for a third of the setlist; after the one-two punch of the opening, “Come in Alone” and “Only Shallow” arrived one after the other at the halfway mark of the performance, and sounded absolutely enormous. Where the iconic guitars of the latter track (and album opener) sound like the roar of a herd of elephants on record, here in the Royal Albert Hall, I could have sworn an army of fucking Mastodons was bearing down on the 5000 spectators assembled within.
The ethereally beautiful, “To Here Knows When”, positively floated around the hall, Bilinda Butcher’s vocals were simply gorgeous, and there seemed to be infinite detail in the rippling, pulsating drones that Shields sent reverberating through the space; it was like a musical fractal, where the closer you listened the more you heard. During the lull after the song faded out, a crowd member shouted out “I love you, Kevin!” and who can blame them? “I love you, too,” replied Shields, “I love you all.” I would have loved him even more if they’d have played “Sometimes” as well, but the transcendental dance party that is “Soon” made up for it. The most “Madchester”-coded song in the band’s repertoire had several audience members in a state of nostalgic rapture, dancing with complete abandon. It’s the kind of track you could happily listen to non-stop for about half-an-hour and you can genuinely understand why Brian Eno heralded it as the future of pop music upon its release back in 1990.
“Wonder 2” made for an appropriate follow-up, leaning as it does even further into the dance music aesthetic with its skittering drum’n’bass beats. It’s a curious track from their now 13 year old latest album and easily the most experimental and “difficult” song of the evening; it’s somehow both psychedelic and methamphetaminised and pointedly sounds like three or four different songs playing at once. It would probably serve as a perfect soundtrack to the stargate sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey. So, give that a go next time you’re at a loose end.
After the barreling barnstormer of “Feed Me With Your Kiss”, the band launched into “You Made Me Realise”, the fourth song of the evening from the EP of that name, which should tell you everything you need to know about quite how important that release is to the history of My Bloody Valentine. It’s a song that has become infamous in its live iteration for its extended noise section, which lasts for about 40 seconds on the original recording but has been extended to upwards of 30 minutes and played at 130dB (approximately the sound of a jet aircraft taking off, with afterburners on, from 50 ft away). It was at this moment, I started to get worried about my unprotected eardrums. However, at the risk of sounding inappropriately aloof, I hazard a guess that perhaps Shields and his bandmates were thinking of the charity the gig was in aid of and decided that some of the young people in attendance had suffered enough already, so they kept the ‘Holocaust’ section, as it has “affectionately” become known, to a mercifully short five minutes. Either that, or they were concerned that the building might not have been able to withstand an extended onslaught, despite it having survived the blitz.
Nevertheless, the sense of release when the shoegaze-meets-noise-rock-meets-dream-pop melody of the song proper returned was positively hair-raising. On a night dedicated to those that suffer and those that help them get through it, in that instant, My Bloody Valentine reminded us all of what it feels like to come out on the other side of something harrowing and be re-embraced by life with all its messiness and beauty. I for one consider myself very lucky to have been there to see it.
