Best Song on "Isn't Anything"

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