Loveless: The Death Knell of Rock?

You're telling me there haven't been any significant rock records made in the past fourteen years???

I am.

I don't find it disturbing or twisted at all!

x-post Kitaro's Kijiki, the death knell of New Age?

http://www.artistdirect.com/Images/Sources/AMGCOVERS/music/cover200/drc100/c146/c14601115tw.jpg→http://www.progreviews.com/reviews/images/Bore-VCN.jpg

The Dwarves - Thank Heaven for Little Girls
Pavement - Slanted and Enchanted
The Fall - Code: Selfish
The Mummies - The Mummies Play Their Own Records
The Night Kings - Increasing Our High
Ruins - Burning Stone
The Fall - The Infotainment Scan
Blue Humans - Clear to Higher Time
Stereolab - Transient Random Noise etc.
The Dwarves - Sugarfix
The Verlaines - Way Out Where
Royal Trux - Cats and Dogs
Stereolab - Mars Audiac Quintet
Lhasa Cement Plant - Return to Oblivion
Circle X - Celestial
The Dead C - Operation of the Sonne
Royal Trux - Thank You
The Fall - Cerebral Caustic
The Dead C - The White House
Monoshock - Walk to the Fire
VON LMO - Red Resistor
Stereolab - Emperor Tomato Ketchup

God, I almost wish I didn't really enjoy Loveless right now.

My two cents as per significant rock albums:

Converge - Jane Doe

x post

BC: Sure. But my whole thing is that people don't fall in love to Pavement, people don't get up in the morning before they go to school and put on Big Black. They put on Smashing Pumpkins or Hole or Nirvana, because these bands actually mean something to them. It's the difference between music you put on to take drugs to, and music you put on to live your life.

First of all, the notion that "new age" = "anything played on a guitar that isn't based on power chords" is silly.

Also, the evolution of rock != reaching the "ideal" of rock. Take the example from my previous post -- just because reggae evolved from R&B and ska doesn't mean that reggae is automatically a higher art form than R&B and ska. It also doesn't mean that no great R&B and ska albums have been recorded since reggae came along.

x-post

????

OK, fine, "based on power chords and/or from distinct guitars that can be easily separated within the mix".

Apart from the black bit, that could be a description of MBV.

Mystic Forest
http://www.mysticforest.tk/

download this track in the samples section:

"Si le bois pouvait parler..." [from the 2004 album Romances]

French Avant Garde Black Metal meets My Bloody Valentine meets King Crimson meets Chopin

Absoloutely stunning.

Not to mention Fushitsusha.

I admit that I never quite "got" MBV fanaticism. After all, they were little more than the Cocteau Twins with an overrated guitarist and post-Mary Chain production values. (That's not a compliment, if you're wondering.)

'Gish' is the only decent Pumpkins record. Corgan was probably right in claiming his music exists in lives, but only the lives of depressed teenagers. (Homer Simpson said this best)

The blanched out sleeve textures of the MBV sleeves had nothing to do with the band, and everything to do with their video director. He worked without finished tracks on occasion. Remember this was Creation, not The Man.

Rock has 'died' so often I can't even remember what it was reincarnated as the first fifty times.

The Cocteau Twins never attempted to kill people with volume, (cocaine, yes) so you have to concede that to MBV. They were fucking loud.

BC: Sure. But my whole thing is that people don't fall in love to Pavement, people don't get up in the morning before they go to school and put on Big Black. They put on Smashing Pumpkins or Hole or Nirvana, because these bands actually mean something to them. It's the difference between music you put on to take drugs to, and music you put on to live your life.

who are LR and BC, this post confused the hell outta me

also, I used to put Big Black's Headache and Racer X on in the morning before I went to school, and not to be contrary or cool (liking Big Black didn't have much cool attached to it at the time, when these records were new), either: it was because that was the music I enjoyed. I think your "people don't fall in love to Pavement" thing has a pretty icky eau d'reactionary: "People don't really believe in these other nonsense ideologies, Real People think like this"

I think this is a more interesting point than you're making it sound though anthony. I mean, yr basically agreeing with Spencer and Matthew that Loveless forms one outer limit for rock, the extent to which rock can be not-rock and still be rock as opposed to something else.

The difficulty I have with the "evolution of rock" model is that it leaves "rock" in question uninterrogated - if anything, My Bloody Valentine is the death knell of a certain idea of rock, an approach to rock which emphasises a deconstruction of its own core principles - ie. the post-punk ideal (The radicalism of Loveless is not its noisiness per se, but rather that it is a vision of rock where the "rock" itself is largely evacuated - the guitars tend toward noise, the songs tend toward pop... and while this is a standard trope in rock I'm not sure if "noise-pop" ever got more comprehensive than this). This for the very reason that the listener realises that beyond this record is the no-man's-land of non-rock - be it noise, new age, whatever. The album is a limit-point for rock's sense of its own universalism: by positing a border, a frontier, it kills the idea of rock's limitless expanse, that rock can do anything that other genres might do without becoming those genres.

no, I am saying for them it is as such. THEY see it as as far as rock can go. Other people clearly consider the Boredoms and Metal Machine Music as still being rock and yet further out.

And anyway, isn't any discussion of style ultimately a matter of "for them it is as such. THEY see it as as far as rock can go"? Does style exist in any objective sense?

whoa thematic x-post, so i'll agree w/ tim and add that measuring rock, or anythin as complicated as a 'genre' on a unidirectional scale is difficult. it's like getting a number grade on an essay

I guess I'm more interested in this thread as an example of how we think genre than as a "Loveless is amazing part XXV" thread.

Not sure what you mean by this. I don't even know this album. Surely, though, if it represents a particular approach within rock hitting a stylistic limit, then it is just that - one approach. It is not the one and only time that rock itself has hit some sort of stylistic limit. It is not even the one and only time that post-punk has hit a stylistic limit. Far from it.

Haha I would if I could DJ Martian, but I'm at work.

It's a very cool track. I'm hearing more similarities to King Crimson than MBV. The prog elements are quite obvious with all the rhythmic shift and in the way that it's divided into distinct movements. The Chopin/piano bit threw me for a loop -- it seemed as though that coda was thrown in there just for the hell of it, but it was certainly a intruiging surprise.

I'm not a metal expert, but I think mid-90's Darkthrone did the best MBV impersonation (apeing the super lo-fi screechy version of "Sunny Sundae Smile"-era MBV). But I'm not hearing much with Mystic Forest's guitars that I haven't heard on other metal records.

Absoloutely stunning

Hmm... pretty good, though didn't like piano or widdly bit at end and would have liked it to be more dynamic.

That was exactly what I meant Tim - that there is not just two poles being rock and non-rock and that all albums fall in a straight line between them. So you can't just track one direction away from rock. There are multiples.

"god knows I think its a more interesting concept than "Loveless is amazing yes," but 'limit point' is just as subjective as 'peak'. With Loveless its a matter of how much abstraction a sound can take while still remaining 'rock.' That some consider it an end-point says more about us (as you put it, how we think genre) than the music itself."

Um Anthony this is exactly what I'm trying to say though! That Loveless is interesting because it seems to come up for so many people as a subjective limit-point, which in turn tells us what many people think about rock as a genre. For me "us" in this context is more interesting than "the music itself".

I don't believe in the sorts of stylistic absolutes that would be necessary in order to posit Loveless as an objective limit-point.

That said, even according to the logic of the speaker, an album which for that person "ROCKS!" more than other albums is unlikely to be that person's limit-point for rock, unless it was a situation where the fact that it ROCKED! was the only thing that linked it to the genre of rock in that person's mind.

With all due respect, Tim, I'm not exactly conceding that anything the likes of Stereolab have done is "significant" in the annals of rock -- much less three of their releases. And I enjoy them fine.

The album is a limit-point for rock's sense of its own universalism: by positing a border, a frontier, it kills the idea of rock's limitless expanse, that rock can do anything that other genres might do without becoming those genres.

I think that's a key point. Because in that sense, rock--however you define it--isn't evolving anymore once it reaches this stage. Which it now appears it did 14 years ago.

the cover is really vibrant. and red! kinda the opposite of blanched.

Ned Raggett to thread...

This is another important point - and where I would distinguish my position from Matthew's is that I don't think that we "know" or "don't know" concrete stuff about rock; rather we "think we know" or "believe" stuff about rock. The shift from My Bloody Valentine to Stereolab is one of belief: do we believe that rock-proper has unexplored expanses or is the only option left internal or external hybridisation? (and obviously there will be some listeners for whom Loveless was already post rock's exhaustion, was itself merely a stylistic hybrid).

So what we see post-Loveless is not so much the exhaustion of rock's potential but, among some circles, a crisis of faith regarding that potential.

I think this discussion is worth having with Loveless as an anchor simply because so many people do seem to take this position in relation to this album (many people seem to do so wrt Nirvana as well, but not generally in a particularly nuanced or sophisticated fashion), so it's worth asking why. What is the meta-narrative at work wrt to rock which leads to this particular album being seen as the end of a moment in rock or even the moment of rock? Is it a legitimate one?

Chuck Eddy to thread! And if MBV didn't ROCK! suitably enough for its fans, they probably wouldn't consider it an end-point of rock either. How much psych-drone-noise stuff is being ignored because its more sluggish, more sludgy?

-- M@tt He1geson (matt@game[remove]informer.com), May 30th, 2005.

actually i think this thread is secretly a hard rock band. the heaviness of the premise may not be apparent at first, but the dense posting and lush language prove im on to something.

or not, take your pick.

holy shit, people still talk about "loveless" as though it didn't contain some of the most mind-numbingly boring song structures ever devised.
x post

-- you will be shot (metaeverythin...), May 29th, 2005. (later)

Whether arrived at by accident or not the way in which a riff seemed to be put through an ambient filter (its crude way of putting it, i kniow) was kinda new but it did sound very dead end: hardly a new way of playing, which is what no wave sounded like...but to add to ywbs's point the thing is that it sound like something out of the acoustic indie scene in the first place, which is where the structural poverty is coming from, and why ppl have struggled with the bass and drums. and more so, it satisfied the confused ideals of 'innovation' within the same, which boiled down to new ideas in the arrangement but it could only ever go so far, rather than what you might mean, ie. an experiment with the structure which compromises the song (anything like that is dismissed as an indulgence!!). If I think of something in rock music I'd think of 'electric ladyland' in the way that hendrix used all these effects but mostly within the song with some ppl (alan licht in the ray russell 'live at the ICA reissue liner notes) feeling that he didn't go far enough with his bands when he could have. Now I don't particurlarly share that opinion...but can see where that's coming from.

Not to slam Loveless or Radiohead, neither of which I give much thought, but I think there are 30 year old Pere Ubu records that way way more "deconstructive" of rock than either of the above.

I've also never doubted the idea that a "significant" rock record can still be made, or thought that nothing more could be done in the genre. Deeming any avant-garde rock record that came after Loveless "post-rock" by definition (regardless of sound) seems pretty arbitrary to me too.

Of course, on the other hand I don't give these things a lot of thought because genre labels don't much matter to me: I'm not any less impressed with/moved by Kid A, Super Ae, D.I. Go Pop, etc. because of a little nagging thought in the back of my head saying "but it's not really a 'rock' record! technically it's post-rock!"

by this logic, rock died during The Sun Sessions

I thank everyone for invoking my name and duh I was going to eventually post on this, but you must understand -- there is in fact very little I can *say* about the record. I have tried to find the words before and, frankly, I can't, not to my satisfaction. This is as close as I ever got, and that was six years ago (the concluding entry to my 136 list, it is also hands down the shortest). I suspect the album is so thoroughly tied up with a place, a time, and a feeling that unpacking it all could...not kill the mystique, that implies something can't be criticized or discussed. Of course it can. But in ways this becomes something so ineluctably, perfectly THERE for me that while I can suggest the fact that I was sent I am too tongue tied to tie together all that would explain it. Once or twice I was asked why I didn't pitch to 33 1/3 to write the MBV book and while I was flattered, I am, to be perfectly honest, much more happy to ready others' takes on it, to think on them and reflect and sense and discuss to the side rather than trying to lead it. There is no way I could accurately convey the time-stopped/knocked-sideways/what IS this? sense I had when I first heard "Soon" back in 1990, not in words.

It is the fact that this was and remains the only time I felt this way upon hearing a record -- that nothing *has* come close that feeling -- that leads me to be in extremely great sympathy with Naive/Spencer/MindinRewind on this point. But it is a personal feeling, not a universal one. I have after all insisted for years that if radical subjectivism must be viable then we are all essentially our own gods in our brains, ordering the universe as we see fit and creating what connections we do -- based on our experiences. As such, Loveless is the lodestone for me. Telling me what lodestones worked for you -- or even what you just played more often in the intervening time -- tells me about you and your tastes, and allows me as a reader and interpreter to read, discuss and debate as I choose.

Tim Finney's posts are well worth keeping in mind as a result. I will have to read them more thoroughly (and this thread -- I did just come back from the airport and at some point here I need to make lunch!) but my understanding is that he is -- I think rightly -- concerned about ossification, both in a generic and a personal sense, though perhaps I overstate or misinterpret, and I don't mean to take his words as him trying to be condemnatory. Tim and I have discussed this before in other but related contexts where Loveless was invoked, and how I have a tendency to look for and focus on sudden eruptions in my head that knocks things skew-whiff -- and perhaps valorize/canonize that moment to a extreme -- whereas he (if I have this right, he can and should correct!) argues for the equal ability for the incremental step to have a building effect, for the shifts to spread out in a way that can frustrate a certain kind of mindset while it entrances the other. Tracking the microshifts in dance cultures and musics famous and obscure during these past few years, for instance, documenting something 'in the moment' is crucial to understanding the functioning of Skykicking as a blog and experience. You could say that I'm looking for one epic one-night-show at a time while he considers things more as a constantly evolving mix, perhaps.

This is perhaps digression but hopefully an illustrative one for considering the subject. Locking something into a canon, personal or not, calls up a host of issues that there's a compelling fear about -- fears of aging, of nostalgia, of again ossification, of potential limitation. Indeed, to use that inadvertantly telling phrase Naive did to start this thread, a death knell. An avoidance of an end-point, if you like, because then you almost feel that there's nothing more to be done (and then you confront the specter of stopped-where-they-were dullards of the past you swore you would never be and feel all the more unsettled if not revolted). Thus perhaps -- and I apologize for climbing onto a slight hobbyhorse here -- why there is such intensity already on this thread about suggesting either newer rock moments that show that the bleeding edge is still being pushed (but for who and for what reason?) or arguing that the search has funnelled into different areas, in otherwards that the impulse remains to reject and renew and retain the capacity for surprise (and to welcome the hit when you sense it), even though it's not necessarily going to be the result of someone plugging in an electric guitar and going "hmmmm, what to do?" with it.

It's not the full scope of this thread, obv. But it's also interesting to me on a larger philosophical level as time and reflection has led me to consider all the more strongly about the functioning of art as a reflection (substitution?) of something attaining religious intensity, about how almost all of here on the boards by default -- including denizens of ILE -- have an intensity about their love for art and its meaning for one's life that borders on the monastic, strange as it may sound. But a secular monasticism, one that transcends an abbey in favor of discourse, laden with heresies and truths and blasphemies, no pope and no structure in favor of axioms that can sometimes be questioned -- and this is not limited just to these boards of course.

I invoke this language precisely because -- to try again to say something about That Moment when I first heard "Soon" and time stopped -- the feeling was sublime in an 18th century sense, seeing a vast vista opened before you...or if you prefer, like the scales had dropped from my eyes (or the wax out of my ears if you like). It was simply that astonishing, that unique. No visions, no hallucinations, I was aware where I was but I was barely aware on the most subconscious of levels -- my mind, dare I say it, was opened.

Asking anyone to agree with me on this in terms of whether it was *this* record or *this* kind of feeling which is crucial would be pointless. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, make fun of it until the cows come home. But I'd say this, and I'd say this about the whole idea of Loveless being a death knell -- it is not death but life, that album. It suggests a charge into the future for me, a freeing, a letting go, an exultance. It did then, it still does now, it does so by being greater than the sum of its individual parts.

I would not think it a sign of stuntedness or limitation or end points to still sense that about something that moved you so much -- artistic, personal, philosophical, a location, a creation, a friend. There is no death knell if the bells you hear ringing are the sheer joy of life, of being in the moment and feeling it surge through you once again, remembering why and how, by what chance, it all started to happen.

For the record, it's not that I don't believe in or like sudden ruptures in one's listening experience or musical tastes... more that I'm interested in, um, the "story" behind the rupture. What is the understanding(s) of music that it is necessary to possess in order to consider Loveless as a rupture/end-point/peak etc? It's strangely fitting that you find it difficult to write abot Loveless in this sense - the entire 136 Albums List in a funny way tells the story of your love for that record more than the specific Loveless review.

If I tend to focus on music which exhibits subtle shifts, gradations, developments etc. it's perhaps partly because I like to imagine that the makers of the music are thinking about all this too - not seeing their music as a fire burst forth from a void but rather as music arising out of other music, a new moment of convergence.

Maybe the slight problem I have with Matthew's praise of Loveless is the terms in which he's couching them. it's cool if you think rock music seemed a bit less satisfying after hearing "Loveless" for the first time; but it's a leap to suggest that it's rock's "eulogy." If an album is a totem which for unknown reasons signified in ways quite beyond other albums we were listening to at that time, we're quite tempted to write about it and defend it as an innovative masterpiece or whatever.

In the summer of '91 (a few months from the release of Loveless, no?) no album got more action than the first Electronic album. It's the record that got me into the Smiths and New Order, the latter of whom remain the great love of my life. It behooves me as a critic to compose a lengthy encomium if that's how I feel; after a few drinks I could (and have) gone on and on about how i feel when I hear those opening acoustic strums on "Get The Message". Yet I didn't fool myself into thinking the album was world-historic or anything.

Chasing innovative masterpieces is the critic's version of a dragon quest.

however, it neither moves its principal stylistic trait to the foreground (say, as drone does), nor, as mentioned earlier, does it explore the improvisatory implications of blissful noise let loose. for a piece of carefully considered, 'composed' music, i'd say a handful of memorable tunes and twists shine through, but they often drift toward meaninglessness instead of ecstasy. shields' obsession with control, while it ironically ties down texture in such a way that it produces unexpectedly sublime results, also exalts a kind of conservatism that sounds dated already. those drums? those verse-chorus-verse progressions? (occasionally a bridge...) give me fushitsusha any day.

(but, o, those tin drums!)

I like the idea of Loveless defining one edge or rock. It's the edge that has nothing whatsover to do with the beat, though (the beat being an important aspect of rock -- the thing that defined it most in the beginning, right?). In terms of The Rock Beat Loveless is a very feeble record.

http://www.musicmatic.de/J/Japan__2a.jpg

http://idealcopy.american-data.net/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/large/MUJapan-TinDrum.jpg

It's always--Nice guitar sound idea, Oh God the drums suck, guitar sound idea is starting to bore me, Does this thing have a melody?, more perfectly imperfect guitar stufffff...zzzzzz.

Just needed to share this once.

Kevin did remix and produce Curve a bit, at least. ;-)

That's why I mentioned them!

Still, I wonder if Ned makes my point incidentally. He says the record is "a freeing, a letting go, an exultance." And within the context that this thread was conceived, I could not agree more. Loveless does represent a freeing, a letting go -- of not only the personal, but also of the trappings and the arbitrary, very useful limitations rock and roll once offered. It is in that sense an affirmation that "rock", however we choose to define it, is no longer relevant.

This is not to say it can't still be functional -- Ned's post clearly confirms otherwise. But as an outgrowth of post-war inhibitions in the 1950's, it is to say that rock and roll is no longer necessary as a cultural force -- that it has simply outlived its purpose.

I say this as no bad thing -- all things come to an end. But in looking around at 21st Century society, rock seems increasingly a quaint anachronism. What's suprising is less that it happened at all -- rather, that it seemed to happen so fast.

But again, Matthew, it's been stated before about other moments in rock history. Lydia Lunch, I think, said that the purpose of no wave was to destroy rock music. And no wave did destroy rock music. Two minutes later, though, some great rock group emerged out of nowhere and people realized that it wasn't over after all.

lydia is wrong both abt punk and no wave. Both had new things in it and its only a matter of degrees. I can see a lot of new bands working on the no wave 'template', and the tuneage in some of haino's stuff is v no-wave, and you could trace the way fushitsusha as a band played on some of the 'dbl live' set with what DNA were doing.

DEFINITION OF FACT:
1: (n) fact (a piece of information about circumstances that exist or events that have occurred) "first you must collect all the facts of the case"

2: (n) fact (a statement or assertion of verified information about something that is the case or has happened) "he supported his argument with an impressive array of facts"

3: (n) fact (an event known to have happened or something known to have existed) "your fears have no basis in fact"; "how much of the story is fact and how much fiction is hard to tell"

4: (n) fact (a concept whose truth can be proved) "scientific hypotheses are not facts"

DEFINITION OF OPINION:
1: (n) opinion, sentiment, persuasion, view, thought (a personal belief or judgement that is not founded on proof or certainty) "my opinion differs from yours"; "what are your thoughts on Helmet?"

2: (n) public opinion, popular opinion, opinion, vox populi (a belief or sentiment shared by most people; the voice of the people) "he asked for a poll of public opinion"

3: (n) opinion, view (a message expressing a belief about something; the expression of a belief that is held with confidence but not substantiated by positive knowledge or proof) "his opinions appeared frequently on the editorial page"

4: (n) opinion, legal opinion, judgment, judgement (the legal document stating the reasons for a judicial decision) "opinions are usually written by a single judge"

5: (n) opinion, ruling (the reason for a court's judgment (as opposed to the decision itself))

6: (n) impression, feeling, belief, notion, opinion (a vague idea in which some confidence is placed) "his impression of her was favourable"; "what are your feelings about the crisis?"; "it strengthened my belief in his sincerity"; "I had a feeling that she was lying"

End of "discussion."

I'm sure Mr. Matos will be pleased to learn he replaced an old Meltzer with a new one. ;-)

Sure — and that may yet happen. Stranger things have happened.

That just made me think that perhaps rock (or whatever trajectory some of us are describing) was somehow "ready" to end in 1991.

Well, two other important things happened that year in rock: Nevermind (as Sterling mentioned) and Talk Talk's Laughing Stock, arguably the first album of the "post rock" era. So, that's certainly possible, Spencer.

Sorry — at least two other important things...

Consider the band Loop, whatever aesthetic ideal they were aiming at would now be accomplished using completely different means (I think Jagz Kooner for example, is doing something very similar, but using sequencers and sampled guitars/textures etc).

(I am all for technology reproducing things in different guises.)

This discussion is just blinded by the very very subjective use of the word "rock" and all its branches, period.

C'mon people! Regulars! Lurkers! Do your bit!

i'll go listen to some sacred harp music now.

http://www.adventurepostoffice.com/cards/love/cannon-m.gif

sounds like:

There are two kinds of people in the world: People who hate Wolf Eyes and liars

-- Tim Finney (tfinne...), May 31st, 2005.

If you'd been paying attention, lad, I did that several posts upthread.

To reiterate and expand: is anyone else here familiar with the guitar music that has come out of Japan over the last decade and a half, most of which makes Loveless sound like Santo and Johnny?

Thanks for the heads up Marcello, but it would be helpful if you set yr browser to allow sarcasm tags.

"Go away, lad, ya BOTHERIN' ME!"

i've only had Loveless for less than a year, but spent a long time avoiding it because it sounded like a complete 'mess' for a long time. everytime someone put it on, i heard what sounded like songs being mushed together, no real definition to the sounds.
but, since that last time i tried, i've taken to a lot of things i didn't think i would. more abstract and looser definitions of what I consider 'good music'. now, i still do NOT think that radiohead has done much of anything that's of the utmost greatness, though, there are PLENTY of people who think otherwise and make those thoughts heard very loudly to me. i respect what they've done, yet do not see anything that they've done as nearly as good as Loveless.
why?
i finally HEARD Loveless. it took months of playing it, but one day it hit. after years of hearing every-damn-note radiohead's played (in live/remix/etc fashion), i still can not get behind them. good songs here and there. ok. fine.
but, Loveless is way beyond that!
maybe i finally got my head around the way it sounds to me, maybe i finally got into the frame of mind where i WANTED to hear it.

to say that Loveless is the 'last DEFINING rawk album' is silly. i've heard many things that are at least as 'up there' as it, if not going deeper into the 'rawk'.
maybe i'm always hoping and dreaming of the next band that will completely level the field in terms of what music means to me and what i'll take away from it. example- i redefined what 'metal' or 'sludge' meant after seeing the Melvins live as opposed to hearing the albums (which still don't appeal as much!). i had never heard a band go as low (bassy wise) and make time quiver on a dime before throwing said dime into a wall! thus, imbedding it.
likewise, Oneida made me rethink my stance on 'avante/psyche' stuff, after seeing them do it in person. there have been plenty of bands that expand the definitions of 'rawk', but in different ways. it's all in what YOU are looking for and what YOU are looking to get out of it.

and i'll still be floored by some band i've never of and appreciate what they do in the context of what's come before...

-- you will be shot

I feel the same for quite a lot of Loveless :( Particularly the back end. As a complete album it fails hard for me... as a proof of concept of what they were reaching for though it's impeccable.

I might actually prefer a good best of if one ever was made to "Loveless" though :-/

(plz to include MBV Arkestra giving me a reason not to have to buy a Primal Scream record).

Which is a shame 'cos some of the stuff on it is beyond incredible.

ack. me too. should jsut stop posting as myself...

I stand by this thread.

I used to love Loveless so much & I still think it's fine but the total Sgt Pepperification of it by my own generation has made it odious to me. Destroy with extreme prejudice.

I used to love Loveless so much & I still think it's fine but the total Sgt Pepperification of it by my own generation has made it odious to me. Destroy with extreme prejudice.

― Just one thing I was thinking about as I was getting on the copter (J0hn D.), Saturday, April 18, 2009

fwiw, most of your generation still haven't heard of it, but "Sgt Pepperification" does strike painfully to the bone du'nnit

most of your generation still haven't heard of it

Was gonna say!

fwiw, most of your generation still haven't heard of it

Exactly, the comparisons to Sgt. Pepper are totally baseless and unfounded... but then, spending one's time on a music crit influenced board for years will have that effect on a person. (Not singling anyone out, I'm guilty of it myself, too!)

loveless is one of my go-to road trip albums and it never fails to satisfy. i went through a period where i absolutely loathed talk about it because i was exhausted by its lionization, but now it doesn't bother me so much (chalk that one up to age, maybe).

there's a post upthread that talks about the album's "mind-numbingly boring song structures" and i have to say that, for me, the boringness is one of its biggest charms. i think warhol's art is great for the same reason (speaking of another overly-canonized artist).

often i like isn't anything more, because not only are the song structures boring, the band actually sound bored playing them.

still you guys have to admit that if Ned started Rolling Stone today...

yeah it's a smaller fish in a more crowded pond granted for sure but y'all know what I mean. you can only hear how goddamn lifechanging something was so many times before you wanna come at the master tapes with a giant magnet sayin "that'll be enough lifechanging epiphanies & lengthy descriptions thereof outta youse, thanks"

I mightve agreed with the thread's premise to a minor extent once of a time - or at least given it consideration - but since then Ive heard things as diverse as Disco Inferno, Alcest, Levitation, Textures, Mesguggah and on and on... the question doesn't even have a context to me, any more.

Also, having gone backwards from there, to discover that what to me at the time seemed groundbreaking, but now knowing other bands did just as incredible and strange things decades earlier (King Crimson, japanese noise, etc), destroys the premise entirely, I feel.

OK wow my second paragraph's incredibly muddled. I kind of mean "Loveless seemed out of this world at the time but now I have found earlier works that shit on it"

Trayce I did not know you dug Levitation, obscure British psych-prog FTW, also good post

I mean I want to come up with a finely-honed, carefully-balanced counter-argument, but M@tt H3lgeson (who's rapidly becoming one of my fave ILXors n/h) kinda nailed it upthread tbh

Trayce OTM!

I loved the Levitation album the moment it came out, championed it like mad, and was roundly mocked because at that point, prog was a joke and a no no.

It is sad they disappeared up Terry Bicker's arse, because they were brilliant.

Actually, Ned nailed it. Great post, illuminating both why Loveless was a brilliant, original forward-step for music and also a means to AUGMENT, rather than kill, rock.

Levitation weren't very proggy by "prog" standards fwiw, they come across now as a particularly loose and imaginative psych-pop outfit, more Verve than Yes. And yeah, Need For Not is super.

Aye, thats true. It's odd no one was interested in them at the time. I dont think it helped that Bickers is a complete fruitcake, but there you go.

Levitation have since been lumped in with the "pronk" "movement" (i.e. they were mates with C******s) but they were slightly atypical 90's skycaptains as far as I'm concerned. These days they get love from, er, C*******s fans, on one of whose albums Christian Hayes played. Didn't Bickers quit during a show?

Re: what I said above, I mean, Loveless, for all its controlled glory, wasn't an absolute. It was a 50-odd-minute piece of sonic juxtaposition which happened to concretise an apparently paradoxical noise-pop-bliss-indie rock ideal more convincingly than anything before it, and probably more coherently than anything since. It remains a definitive statement of musical intent. To suggest that it prevented the chances of any subsequent record making a statement of similar valency and thus an original piece of Rock Music worthy of the name is narrow-minded in the extreme. Loveless applied its own ends to rock instrumentation, and found an ideal that was entirely its own. Not an ideal that was ever Rock's. Rock is far too mercurial and elusive a quantity to be restricted in such a manner; it would insult Loveless to claim that it ever was. Loveless wasn't a funnel into which all Rock was poured; it was a loom into which sound was fed. Rock was at the loom's controls, not the substance being weaved therein.

...no, wait, MBV were at the controls of this particular loom, and Rock was the factory they lived in

if Rock was at the controls, then it would be seeking to create an ideal, whereas Rock does not do that, for it is a realm of multitudes, in which visionaries may build their dream-machines and then operate them

Loveless wasn't a funnel into which all Rock was poured; it was a loom into which sound was fed

Close; it was a rock album by a rock band.

Well, indeed, and I shouldn't overindulge in my own metaphorical horseplay, but what I meant by that analogy was that Loveless was a finely-crafted edifice WITHIN a large, variegated and multidirectional community, rather than a nodal point at which all Rock paused, looked at itself, took a deep breath, and recalculated its own values.

Huh?

90% of what I write is sound and fury, signifying nothing, or, in this case, the fact that Loveless isn't part of a wider rock metanarrative. Why I invented a metanarrative of sorts to illustrate this, I have no idea.

Er, I mean "isn't part of a UNIVERSAL rock metanarrative". There are *slightly* wider metanarratives (noise-pop, bliss-pop, advancement of guitar sonics) you could easily apply.

I get what you mean Loujag. It didn't come out of a vacuum. Nothing does.

Well maybe Jandek did. But anyway.

o wait maybe I didnt get what you meant.

It didn't come out of a vacuum. Nothing does.

except Bohemian Rhapsody ffs

*goes to bed*

It didn't come out of a vacuum. Nothing does.

except Bohemian Rhapsody ffs

It came out of a vacuum; let's hope it disappears into a black-hole.

xpost loool

Hahahah LJ nice selfpwn.

Why are Loveless threads always the worst?

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Monday, July 25, 2005 6:15 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

So what happened now?

I like what J0hn is saying and there should be more of it.

Loveless was a finely-crafted edifice WITHIN a large, variegated and multidirectional community,

I agree.

rather than a nodal point at which all Rock paused, looked at itself, took a deep breath, and recalculated its own values.

And that album, according to typical rock canonization, would be Nevermind.

Actually, my hindsight agrees with this, in a more general sense. I dunno. At the time I remember Loveless being this OMG thing - but Isn't Anything had already done that (as had the first JAMC album), so that did it for alt rock.

Nevermind did it for chart rock.

BTW Ned I admire that this is clearly one of your most cherished ever albums but you can still be circumspect about its relevance within the overall scene without being precious about it at all. Thats why you are awesome!

When the album came out, the band openly thanked Sonic Youth for giving the electric guitar at least 10 more years of relevance (some print interview).

I thought the album was pretty when it came out. It still sounds pretty to me. I give it 4/5 stars. It's no 'Slanted & Enchanted,' which came out a few months later.

so rock's 'progression' is basically starting with a black guy talking about sex with guitars and a backbeat and then basically making it gradually more and more whiter until you have an Enya album.

― miccio (miccio), Sunday, May 29, 2005 5:23 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

Best ILM post ever.

one of the most appealing aspects of loveless to me is that it it is amazingly inspired and fully realised, yet at the same time the main source of influence it seems to draw upon is the singularity of the album's premise itself; its sense of daring and uniqueness, its ambition to sound completely unprecedented, and its desire to take rock music forward in advanced and challenging new ways, simultaneously acknowledging and shedding ties with music that came before it. the loveless sound has become a staple for disciples to digest, attempt to get a grip on and imitate, yet very few contemporary acts have the ability to invent new sounds convincingly and take bountiful steps towards shaping the direction of future rock music, at least not in the same assured way that MBV did almost two decades ago.

h8 2 break it 2 u guys, but they just had a lot of pedals

hahah

"Starpower," "Schizophrenia," and "Kotton Krown" were all recorded 3-4 years before Loveless came out.

True, but "Isnt Anything" came out at that time, and it blew me away, much more than Loveless ever did. But I have to say this: it wasn't because they were doing anything new for the genre... it was because they were doing something amazingly new for them!. Thats all the impact it ever had for me.

miccio's posts full of misguided prejudices against enya

I bet there were lots of people who never listened to SGT. Peppers at the time and even now that they are 65 wouldn't be able to figure out which rock songs were on it.

It's hilarious that some posters will go to such great lengths to downplay the uniqueness of "Loveless". Sometimes it's OK to simply claim that a record was inspiring and innovative -- many records are! -- i.e. one can find the middle ground between "the death knell of rock" and "LOL suckers Sonic Youth and Levitation were the TRUE innovators DO YOU SEE??"

You all know that Shepherd Moons was released on the same day as Loveless, right? Hell yeah I bought them both.

Mainly on the strength of this review:

Calling Loveless a near carbon copy of Isn't Anything puts it quite mildly. In general, My Bloody Valentine's own musical style and work remains the same, again assisted on production by Nick Robbins and with lyrics by Belinda Butcher. Loveless does have one key factor that's also carried over from Isn't Anything -- it's quite good listening. Though the total continuity means that those who enjoy their work will again be pleased and those who dislike it won't change their minds, in terms of finding their own vision and sticking with it, MBV have increasingly polished and refined their work to a strong, elegant degree. "Soon," the lead single, avoids repeating the successful formula of "Feed Me with Your Kiss" by means of its waltz time -- a subtle enough change, but one that colors and drives the overall composition and performance, the closest MBV might ever get to a dance number. Some songs call to mind traditional Irish music even more strongly than much of their earlier work, while two other tracks are haunting rearrangements of old, traditional rock numbers. With their trademark understated drama in full flow many other places, especially on the wonderful "To Here Knows When" (replaced on later pressings with an English language version done for the film Far and Away), MBV shows themselves to still have it, to grand effect.

lol

by means of its waltz time

hahahaha

Nicely done, that.

It's no 'Slanted & Enchanted,' which came out a few months later.

And for this I cannot be thankful enough.

It's hilarious that some posters will go to such great lengths to downplay the uniqueness of "Loveless". Sometimes it's OK to simply claim that a record was inspiring and innovative -- many records are! -- i.e. one can find the middle ground between "the death knell of rock" and "LOL suckers Sonic Youth and Levitation were the TRUE innovators DO YOU SEE??"

Barry, I don't think anyone here has denied that Loveless has unique qualities. However, the thread's premise goes quite a bit further than that. And that does seem ludicrous to some of us. (Levitation only ever came up as one example in a list of other bands that were doing interesting or innovative things.)

I don't think Loveless represents any kind of extreme or historical breaking point in terms of what can be done with electric guitar sound or electronic production in a rock context, let alone in terms of other aspects of rock such as song form or rhythm. In terms of its broader social impact, it seems marginal, especially outside the UK.

Having seen them live now, this album is a whole different thing.

wtf & this Pavement bullshit: Sure S&E combined tastefully-selected anachronistic shapes into a new hybrid, but Loveless invented a whole new type of shit. There is no comparison.

this is all just like, your opinion, maaaaaaan

maaaaaaan - Is this supposed to sound like Crispin Glover in The River's Edge, or Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now?

otto from the simpsons.

Thought it was from "The Big Lebowski"

oh shit you're right!