Loveless (album)

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Loveless
Studio album by My Bloody Valentine
Released	4 November 1991
Recorded	1989–1991
Genre	Shoegazing
Length	48:36
Label	Creation Records (UK) Sire Records (U.S.)
Producer(s)	Kevin Shields
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link Robert Christgau (A-) link Piero Scaruffi (9/10) link
My Bloody Valentine chronology
Isn't Anything (1988)	Loveless (1991)

Loveless is an album by the Irish-British band My Bloody Valentine, released on November 4, 1991 (see 1991 in music) on Creation Records in the UK and on November 5 on Sire Records in the U.S. It is widely considered to be My Bloody Valentine's magnum opus, the epitome of the shoegazing genre, and one of the most influential albums of the 1990s.

The album itself cost about £100,000, but the recording process took three years and cost £250,000, resulting in two EPs (Glider and Tremolo, on which "Soon" and "To Here Knows When" made their first appearances) and four music videos, and nearly bankrupting their label.

Loveless, despite its highly enthusiastic reviews, only reached #24 on the UK Albums Chart, while never charting in the U.S.

The album cover is a movie still of a Fender Jazzmaster guitar, focused at the neck joint, from the music video for "To Here Knows When".

Brian Eno said, regarding the song "Soon", "It set a new standard for pop. It's the vaguest music ever to have been a hit."[1]

Contents 1 Style 2 Critical response 3 Track listing 4 Samples 5 Personnel 5.1 Band 5.2 Production 6 List positions 7 Miscellanea 8 External links

[edit] Style

The album, for the most part composed by main guitarist and band leader Kevin Shields, is characterized by highly amplified and deeply layered distorted electric guitars, with bass guitar and drums kept low in the mix. The vocals, which are kept relatively low in the mix as well, are similarly layered, breathy, and for the most part high-pitched, serving a mainly melodic function, with somewhat free-form lyrics which are often hard to make out. Themes recognizable in these are love, sleep and sex, contributing to the album's general vague, off-key ambience, more emotional than rational, and as frequently described, "dreamy". Samples, often of Bilinda Butcher's own voice, are used to establish hooks and, occasionally, melody-lines.

The drum track used on the album is comprised of both live and sampled drumming. Drummer Colm O'Ciosoig had his playing sampled, which was used after he fell ill during the production of the album. It meant that the drums still had the feel of Colm's drumming, despite being programmed. [2]

Melody and structure-wise, it provides a myriad of ethereal nuances that make one of the most enthralling albums released in the 1990s, filtered through almost avant-garde levels and types of distortion and noise.

[edit] Critical response

Due to its highly specific style, the record set itself apart from its sparser and often mellower peers in the shoegazing genre, therefore gathering a large amount of attention from critics. A large number of reviewers in the British music press in particular touted it as one of the best, if not the best of its genre and the album eventually became one of the most highly regarded musical references of the nineties. To this day, reviews often use it as a means of reviewing other albums by means of comparison, and it still consistently pops up on "Best Albums" lists.

In 1999 Pitchfork Media named Loveless the best album of the 90s; [3] in their 2003 revision of the list, however, it moved to number two, swapping places with Radiohead's OK Computer. [4] In 2003, the album was ranked number 219 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

[edit] Track listing

1. "Only Shallow" (Bilinda Butcher, Kevin Shields) – 4:17
2. "Loomer" (Butcher, Shields) – 2:38
3. "Touched" (Colm O'Ciosoig) – 0:56
4. "To Here Knows When" (Butcher, Shields) – 5:31
5. "When You Sleep" (Shields) – 4:11
6. "I Only Said" (Shields) – 5:34
7. "Come in Alone" (Shields) – 3:58
8. "Sometimes" (Shields) – 5:19
9. "Blown a Wish" (Butcher, Shields) – 3:36
10. "What You Want" (Shields) – 5:33
11. "Soon" (Shields) – 6:58

[edit] Samples

[edit] Personnel

[edit] Band

Colm O'Ciosoig 

drums, sampler, mixer

Bilinda Butcher 

vocals, guitar

Debbie Googe 

bass

Kevin Shields 

guitar, vocals, sampler, producer, mixer, engineer

[edit] Production

• Alan Moulder - engineer
• Dick Meaney - engineer
• Anjali Dutt - engineer
• Guy Fixsen - engineer
• Harold Burgon - engineer
• Nick Robbins - engineer
• Ingo Vauk - engineer
• Andy Wilkinson - engineer
• Darren Allison - engineer
• Nick Addison - engineer
• Charles Steel - engineer
• Tony Falter - engineer
• Hugh Price - engineer
• Adrian Bushby - engineer
• Pascale Giovetto - engineer
• Nick Savage - engineer
• My Bloody Valentine - art direction
• Angus Cameron - photography
• Ann Marie Shields - coordination

[edit] List positions

• #1 - Pitchfork Media: Top 100 Albums of the 1990s
• #2 - Pitchfork Media: Top 100 Albums of the 1990s Redux
• #219 - Rolling Stone: 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
• #22 - Spin Magazine: 100 Greatest Albums, 1985–2005

[edit] Miscellanea

• The Square Enix RPG game Final Fantasy VII, the seventh installment in the highly popular Final Fantasy series, features a visual reference to the album - in a full motion sequence in the beginning of the game, there is a shot of a poster which features a pale girl and the words "My Bloody Valentine" and "Loveless" [5]. It is later on explained that Loveless is the name of a popular play. The girl on the poster bears a resemblance to band member Bilinda Butcher.

[edit] External links

• Lyrics
• Tablature
• Analysis of the use of noise as music in Loveless
• Analysis of the importance of Loveless in music history

My Bloody Valentine
Kevin Shields | Colm O'Ciosoig | Bilinda Butcher | Debbie Googe
Albums
Isn't Anything | Loveless
EPs
This Is Your Bloody Valentine  | Geek!  | The New Record by My Bloody Valentine  | Sunny Sundae Smile  Strawberry Wine  | Ecstasy  | You Made Me Realise  | Feed Me with Your Kiss  | Glider  | Tremolo
Compilations
Ecstasy and Wine
Labels
Creation Records | Island Records | Sire Records
Related articles
Shoegazing | List of songs by My Bloody Valentine
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