Best Song on "Isn't Anything"

seems like most reviews talk about how sexy it is but i'm not really hearing it. wrt loveless, sure

CUPID COME ffs

Perhaps a majority opinion but I think this is their best album

^ Easily, I reckon.

I bet I silently voted for "Cupid Come" back in the day, but I can't see a wrong answer up there.

Perhaps a majority opinion but I think this is their best album

― assert (MatthewK), Saturday, March 20, 2021 4:48 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I wonder if the consensus has shifted actually because obviously Loveless is the canon album, but I too have always preferred this one and I know a lot of people feel the same way.

loveless is better imo but the distinction is really meaningless, they’re both amazing

I've always found Isn't Anything more consistent, but I prefer Loveless's highs. Then again, I think m b v is their best album, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

I'd love mbv more if it didn't sound like they'd replaced Colm with a drum machine on much of it. In reality I think I'm just missing the krautrock drum parts on that one- it's one of my favorite elements of the earlier material and essential to the soaring feeling those songs have overall. Instead mbv is full of these shuffling drum parts that suck some of the energy away imo.

MBV have a drummer?

Ok that was needlessly snarky. I do enjoy his patterns on 'Soon', where they're actually audible, but otherwise he's almost always had to put up with a belittling mix. It's one of the main reasons I've never rated Loveless as highly as the critical establishment (well, that and the fact that some of its songs are too cheesy for my ears).

colm is quite a powerhouse live

Hmm I don't know he certainly is a prominent element in the earlier material? Imagine how deflated songs like Honey Power, When You Sleep or You Never Should would be if they didn't have that propulsive live drum part and instead had that shuffling preprogrammed pattern sound from mbv? Obviously they were likely going for something different on mbv in general, but still. I don't agree the drums were an afterthought on the other albums. Plus I'm talking more about the execution vs. the production.

i've been listening to mbv this morning and don't really hear what you're hearing in the drums, idk

colm is def essential to isn't anything and the surrounding EPs, his fills make me lol they're so frequent and fast

and his presence/absence on loveless via sampled and recreated drum tracks... fascinating...

Tbf Isn't Anything is nowhere near as bad in this regard. I suppose what I like about m b v is that it owns up the hushing of Colm (in the studio, at least), whereas Loveless perversely gestures towards unrealized potential. You mentioned 'When You Sleep' – you're right to point out that the drum part is key to it, yet I can't help but feel like the Loveless version fails to do justice to its punchiness and drive (that said, I've never heard/seen the band live).

3xp

In other words, the fact that m b v's drum parts sound less organic (regardless of how the effect was obtained) is a-ok as far as I'm concerned.

they sound more organic than loveless to my ears, i mean ffs "new you"

it's a very simple, groovy, and repetitive part but that's why it's good

To me, that one's got a trip-hoppy feel, like it's approximating an organic sound (and very successfully, at that!).

But I don't feel as strongly about this as Evan tbh.

i've been listening to mbv this morning and don't really hear what you're hearing in the drums, idk

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Saturday, March 20, 2021 12:48 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

Really? It's so glaring to me that it really threw me off when mbv first came out. There was a big piece of the magic missing and I realized it was that. Without the essential factor of the propulsive beats and those fills you mentioned, the album (which I promise I do actually like) has sort of an idling-engine quality/sound throughout. Who Sees You and If I Am share the same idle pattern. In Another Way is more rocking but it is more of a shuffle. Maybe that's not a good description? Anyway, nothing like those earlier tracks I cited. No fills!

Yeah exactly, "organic" is a good qualifier for what I mean.

B4 You Never Should 11

shit, y'all nailed it

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Saturday, 20 March 2021 02:30 (fifteen hours ago) link

Really? Strikes me as a frustrating example of ranking shit that need not be ranked. We don't have to do this.

I def like that song a while bunch but it seems an odd choice for isn't anything winner. In that it has a discernable melody, a discernable chord progression, discernable lyrics, a clear hierarchy of parts to the whole (at least by mbv standards). It's one of their most straightforward, songiest songs.

Not many polls with this many choices where everything gets at least one vote...

― Loud guitars shit all over "Bette Davis Eyes" (NYCNative),

I would have expected it to be way more split tbh. I've never thought of this as an album with obvious high and low points.

well i mean the fills are cool and really suit the punkier stuff but i kinda think they wouldn't work in the drowned world of mbv. also there's this album called loveless in between the two where the drums take on the more textural quality (quite literally with many of them being samples) that mbv... continues? idk. are you looking for something more like the drum track to "city girl"?

For the more relaxed numbers yeah I prefer the drumming approach of City Girl, yeah. Exactly. But I do miss the presence of Colm's rocking motorik beat which was a staple of those upbeat songs and subsequently an often emulated factor in all the shoegaze they inspired.

too many yeahs sorry

The last three songs on this pull a lot of the inchoate feelings stirred up by the opening nine into focus.

― Halfway there but for you, Friday, March 19, 2021 11:02 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, and I would add that the visceral element is noticably more pronounced at the end

some of its songs are too cheesy for my ears)

Agree w/ this. Also, while it doesn't exactly 'sound like' anything else (deliberate copycats notwithstanding), I've heard a lot of things with the same 'xtatic' mood. Also also that whole top layer of Mellotron shit is saccharine and unnecessary and dilutes or detracts from the real innovative production ideas imo. Would love to hear a mix with the mellotron muted out.

where's that one thread where attempted to find the most even, consistent album in ILX poll result history?

This is easily my favorite MBV album. Lose My Breath is one of my favorite songs, but I can't label any of the songs on this album as bad.

I am listening to loveless for the first time in probably more than a decade and i don't think there is an actual mellotron on it lol

colm is def essential to isn't anything and the surrounding EPs, his fills make me lol they're so frequent and fast

He was pretty much their star performer when they first emerged.

here's my only beef with mbv really: i don't think the sequencing works. theoretically i should love an album that starts off in a drowned world, comes up for air, and soon thereafter goes to the club in order to enter a different kind drowned world via breakbeats. but idk... v harsh transitions on that record

isn't anything is sequenced like a really fun indie rock record with weird pockets of negative space where the gravity inverts and everything hangs queasily in the air. loveless is sequenced, idk, perfectly

I wish I felt the same but then again it's not so much the sequencing that bothers me as the fact that 'Come in Alone', 'Blown a Wish' and 'What You Want' leave me cold, and 'To Here Knows When' overstays its welcome. I do greatly enjoy the rest, however, especially 'Soon' and 'Sometimes'.

I’m a big loveless fan but this album never grabbed me

lmao pom, that is like a list of my favorite songs on loveless

add "i only said" and it would be

lol well I guess this is a perfect microcosm of where we part ways musically. We also like a lot of the same things, though, so it's cool.

I was passively familiar with a bunch of their songs for years -- a few from Loveless and YMMR which I enjoyed the best.

When I finally got around to hearing Isn't Anything tho, "You Never Should" was the song that kind of unlocked their entire catalog, and I suddenly got it in a way I hadn't before. I think it's pretty great gateway song and album, and I don't think it's a coincidence that most people I know IRL who think MBV is boring have never heard this album.

Isn't Anything, which I took years to like, sounds more epochal to my ears now: the distortions and comic book violence of Sonic Youth treated as abrupt stops, punctuative noise, and onomatopoetic distraction. I love how it never resolves itself.

sexiest album ever committed to tape. this was the peak. it's 3D! there's so much motion, depth, perfect juxtaposition of abrasion and comfort. never worn this record out but loveless feels a bit stationary and too safe against this one.

Yeah, it’s a wonderful exercise in maximalism, but Isn’t Anything is the bare weirdness and eros at its heart. Nothing sounds like it or feels like it.

xp "Come In Alone" has been my favorite on Loveless for the past few years.

I always found Loveless a little cloying, but hearing it again after all this time, what really struck me is how British it sounds. Isn't Anything doesn't sound particularly British or American, but Loveless definitely has a whiff of 'Creation Records', or more of an element of 'The Stone Roses and Primal Scream with the swagger of Oasis'.

Otoh there are a couple of tracks that could easily be Smashing Pumpkins songs if you grafted Billy Corgan's vocal on.

There is no Mellotron afaict but i'm happy with "mellotron shit" as a descriptor of what I would like stricken from the mix

no