my bloody valentine 🇮🇪 🇬🇧
Genres: Shoegaze, Noise Pop, Dream Pop, Post-Punk, Noise Rock, Neo-Psychedelia
Influenced by: The Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, late-1970s Wire, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Pastels, The Beach Boys, The Ramones
Date Formed: 1983
Date i discovered them: July 2024
my bloody valentine is my favorite band of all time, and one of, if not the most influential artist within the "Shoegaze" genre and a highly influential act for lots of other types of music in general, too. they are known for their highly innovative use of guitar effects and overall noisy sound; they invented a method of playing called "glide guitar" where you strum an electric guitar while simultaneously holding down the whammy bar, which creates a dreamy, warped effect.
they are also infamous for their extremely loud live shows, where they attempt to push the experience of live music to its absolute limits, and demonstrate the psychological and physical effects sound can have when pushed to such high volume. i personally haven't been to one of their live shows, since i'm a fairly newer fan and i live in the US, but if they ever announce a tour date near where i live i'll give up a kidney to attend :')
click on a release to see more info about it! (& my personal thoughts about each)
Albums
EPs
Singles
Live
Compliations
The New Record by My Bloody Valentine (1986) 
tracklist:
- Lovelee Sweet Darlene - 2:09
- By the Danger in Your Eyes - 2:46
- On Another Rainy Saturday - 2:35
- We're So Beautiful - 2:25
total length: 9:55
ironic title, eh? well. this one is like 10% better than the stuff before this but it's not amazing bc David Conway is still there. o_o
Sunny Sundae Smile (1987) 
tracklist:
- Sunny Sundae Smile - 2:23
- Paint a Rainbow - 2:13
- Kiss the Eclipse - 2:25
- Sylvie's Head - 1:50
total length: 8:51
i listened to this for the first time on valentine's day last year, and i didn't think much of it. but today as i was going through and doing this discography thing, i wanted to revisit this one just to see if it was really a 7/10 or if it was better. and... i think it might actually be better than i thought, i think i was underrating this a little bit. this is David's best vocal performance probably, i can actually tolerate his voice on this, they're pretty nice. and i think kevin might've been doing some backing vocals on this, i felt like i could kinda hear him but i'm not sure. i actually really like the chorus to "Sunny Sundae Smile"... i was thinking about it today a lot and all of a sudden it felt kinda beautiful when i was hearing it in my head. so that's nice. (i know the songs are about disgusting things though but we're just gonna ignore that !!! ... ) maybe i'm warming up to this earlier mbv stuff.
Strawberry Wine (1987) 
tracklist:
- Strawberry Wine - 2:33
- Never Say Goodbye - 2:32
- Can I Touch You - 3:14
total length: 8:20
bilinda is finally here!!! immediately you can see what a massive difference it made to their sound. and i just love these songs too, they're sooo cutee!! :) they make me so happy. i'll always associate these songs with roadtrips and staring at pretty mountains out the window
You Made Me Realise (1988)
tracklist:
- You Made Me Realise - 3:44 video
- Slow - 3:10
- Thorn - 3:28
- Cigarette in Your Bed - 3:28
- Drive It All Over Me - 3:05
total length: 17:04
from here forwards we have the songs that are part of the "official" mbv canon. (the ones that are on their website/on streaming.)
this EP is probably their most iconic EP, and also a very important moment in their discography, because these were the first songs where Kevin started to play the guitar using the whammy bar, his special trick. the songs on this EP were also made very quickly, i think about in the span of a week? which makes it even more impressive. classic songs from front to back here. the song that hooked me the most was probably "drive it all over me", because i love the country-drive feeling it has, and i also love the lyrics on this song and the way bilinda sings it here. for some reason that song almost feels as cozy as like, listening to the Charlie Brown theme song for me, i don't know why. and i love it. oh yeah, and the first time i listened to "cigarette in your bed", i got that same feeling that i got when i listened to "when you sleep" for the first time, where the melody bilinda sings with the do-do-dos felt SO familiar! like i knew it from a kids TV show i used to watch when i was little somehow. crazy
Loveless (1991)
tracklist:
- Only Shallow - 4:17 video visualizer
- Loomer - 2:38
- Touched - 0:56
- To Here Knows When - 5:31 video
- When You Sleep - 4:11
- I Only Said - 5:34
- Come In Alone - 3:58
- Sometimes - 5:19
- Blown A Wish - 3:36
- What You Want - 5:33
- Soon - 6:58 video visualizer
total length: 48:36
loveless is my favorite album of all time, so this thoughts section is focused on my story surrounding how i found the album and how i grew to love it :)
finding my pink fuzzy sounds
the first time i remember hearing this album that changed me was when i was on vacation one night. the sky was dark outside, and i was laying on my hotel bed. this vacation rental was pretty dirty; i think there were bugs everywhere in the building because it was a cheap AirBnB, and for some reason i brought my "good" headphones on the trip. (and i say "good" but compared to the headphones i have now they weren't the most amazing headphones ever, i just had them from this cinema class i was taking...) bringing those headphones was a bad idea because i actually broke the headphones in the luggage and stuff on that trip. good thing i had 2 pairs. wait why am i talking abt this again? idk but anyways, i was scrolling on my phone on YouTube, and i decided to click on this random video because i was bored. it was titled something like, "Every Rock Genre" or something like that. and basically it was one of those videos that just showed a little clip of each genre for a few seconds to get acquainted with it before it moves on to the next one. there were a lot of weird genres in that video. and one of them was a genre called "Shoegaze". and, the song they used for that clip was "When You Sleep" by my bloody valentine.
one of the weirdest things i've ever experienced with music happened once that tiny little clip played of the main guitar riff in the song.
it's like... i felt a deep familiarity with the sound. i had to pause the video and just reflect on this for a few minutes. i tried to dig deep into the recesses of my memory to try to remember where i'd heard the song before, but i couldn't remember anything. the only picture that popped into my head was a really random memory of me standing outside of my brother's bedroom when i was younger. and, i don't think that memory had anything to do with the song, because as far as i know, i don't think my brother has ever listened to shoegaze... it was so weird... and i still haven't experienced anything like that from hearing a new song ever since. i literally felt like i'd known that song my entire life, and that it was an important song to me already, even though i'd only heard the song for 5 SECONDS!!!! what.
that moment put it into my head that i had to listen to the album (Loveless), and i think maybe even before that i was already aware of the album that song was on a bit by seeing it everywhere on music websites. it took a bit to actually listen to it though, maybe a few weeks, because this album was one of those albums that i'd call "intimidating" from first glance. i don't know, i just have to be in a certain mood to listen to new music, especially albums considered "classics", because i guess for some reason i think that i'm immediately gonna hear the craziest thing in the world upon pressing play. i mean, the scores on the rating website i used all had it rated sky high, and the reputation this album had was insane. so i wanted to be "mentally prepared" for it somehow.
but one night, i realized that i was really never gonna be mentally prepared in the way i wanted to be. so i said SCREW IT!!!!!!!! and just listened to it. i sat down on my desk, used my cracked version of Spotify to find the album, and finally pressed play. (i know, ew spotify & down with streaming services, i don't use spotify anymore...)
the first full encounter
i actually don't remember my reaction to the burst of guitars in the beginning of "Only Shallow". i feel like most people usually remember that moment, because... y'know, it sounds like THAT, but yeah i just kinda... listened to it i guess idk. i think my mind probably wasn't 100% in it at first because there was a storm going on that night, everything felt pretty hectic i guess, and i was just thinking about how i would rate it too much (i'll get more into that later)
oh yeah and the power literally went out in my house right after the song ended and "Loomer" started playing for a few seconds. so that probably ruined my first listen, too. i had to rush and scramble to figure out how to get the Wi-Fi back online, and eventually i remembered that phone hotspots exists and i continued my listen.
i actually have my review that i wrote right after finishing the album for the very first time still saved... hold on lemme dig it out real quickly...
(feel free to open this image in a new tab to zoom in on it. i might code a way so that you can click on it and it gets bigger but not rn.)
reading this old review, i could see a lot of problems with my mindset going into the listen, especially with how i had this notion that there was something that i needed to "get". my expectations were set way too high, and i don't think i even really knew what i wanted it to sound like for me to "get" it, anyways. i'll discuss this in more detail in a bit.
also, there are a few cool things i want to mention about this old review. reading all this, i feel that, in some sorta way, i understood what the album was going for already, before i even read any interviews about it or anything. like, i said that i would "zone out and comprehend the entirety of it as a whole", and i think that's kinda how you're actually supposed to listen to songs like To Here Knows When, since the sounds are so overwhelming that you have to "zoom out" from hearing any individual sounds to get the whole picture. and then the whole thing where i couldn't focus on anything... now i know it's supposed to be a very blurry, trippy sound, so that's a feature, not a bug... and... i also mentioned that the music sounded like something you would hear inside a dream. which is a good thing to mention too because they basically wrote the whole thing half awake; kevin shields has mentioned various times about he was really into this state of mind called "hypnogogia", the transition between being asleep and awake, and he would write a lot of songs within that state.
and, i also mentioned at the end of that review about how i heard the song "When You Sleep" from "somewhere", even though... i didn't. i still believed that i heard that song when i was younger or something, weeks after that little incident on vacation happened. even though i really didn't. yeah i'm still kinda in disbelief about this, years after it happened. like how did i get that feeling? it makes no sense and its kinda magical thinking about it.
anyways... i didn't end up posting that initial review. i just kept on getting a really strong feeling that i needed to maybe reconsider things and give it another chance. honestly, you could tell reading that initial review that i was very insecure with my opinion, knowing that it wasn't in the majority. so i think it was inevitable that i ended up not setting that in stone anywhere.
i try not to be so insecure about my opinions anymore, but back then i was still fairly new to reviewing things so i had a lot of kinks to work out in how i rated stuff. i'd like to think that now my ratings better reflect my true feelings, and now i know better when to just listen to albums and leave the ratings for another time, too.
so, you're probably wondering, how did i learn to love this album, though? and give it another proper chance? because obviously it became my favorite album and everything.
well, my initial review mentioned that it sounded like "dream music". and this ended up being the main key to the puzzle...
learning to love the sounds of dreams
basically, some angel in my head gave me an idea to listen to the album to fall asleep, since it was called something like "dream music". i was like, what if i literally made it play while i was dreaming. i swear, that has got to be the best idea i've ever had. because IT WORKED. and that's why i'm here rambling about it like a madwoman on this website today.
honestly, i think the thing that made it really click for me is that, upon doing this relisten, i framed the entire experience of listening to the album differently. on the first listen, i was more concerned with trying to figure out "how good" the music was compared to my expectations, analyzing everything i was hearing to try to make sense of it and see if anything stood out to me that way. but, when i just went in bed, and put it into the background, i let the music just happen to me naturally, without over analyzing it at all and instead using my pure feelings to take it in... letting the sounds enter without any prior judgement or overanalyzing. and i feel like that's the main thing that helped me to learn to love it, because, with an album like Loveless that's meant to be more about the feeling of listening to it than anything else, when you try to take it on in a sort of analytical and nonfeeling lens, the magic is lost.
i most noticed this when i would drift in and out of consciousness... because when i would become awake again, it was always the album doing that to me, some sorta sound that jolted me awake. and when it would do that, i would just be... shocked, and astonished at the sounds that were being flung at me through my headphones. it just hit different in a way that's hard to explain. also, i got another deep memory that came to me on the 2nd relisten with the vocals. for some reason, i got reminded of being inside a roller skating rink. when i was younger, when i would go to places like that, there would always be very loud music blasting through the speakers, and it would be so loud that the vocals would hardly make sense to me; it all just seemed to be one big mass of poppy sounds that would overwhelm me. and on Loveless, with the vocals being smushed into the sound to make it all be "one thing", i got reminded of that same feeling... but instead of being overwhelmed, it was nice. i didn't have to focus on what they were saying, and instead just focusing on feeling the sounds as they passed through me instead. it was beautiful, and from then on i deeply understood what MBV was going for with that creative decision.
at the end of the 2nd relisten, i bumped my score up to the album being almost perfect, and i even commented that i kinda wanted to listen to it every night, since the feelings i got from that relisten were just so good.
so, over time, i started to do just that, and listen to it again, and again, and again... and again... and eventually, i didn't even have to be half-awake to fully appreciate the album; it would hit hard no matter where i was and what time of day i heard it. i remember tearing up listening to "Sometimes" while walking to my next class one day and staring at the trees outside, and being in heavenly bliss listening to "What You Want" on the car ride to school and on other walks to class. it became an escape from reality, a place where i could go and just feel this blissful feeling and get lost inside of all the beautiful pink fuzzy sounds.
and as i began to explore MBV's other material, i realized that pretty much all of their music was able to give me this amazing inner peace. the combination of fuzzy guitars and the vocals of Kevin and Bilinda could calm me down no matter what. so naturally, they became my favorite band. i just started to realize that this music really fit who i was and my brain i guess better than anything else i'd ever heard before... so, with this band, and the entire genre of Shoegaze by extension, i could say, yeah... this is MY music!... and i can't stop thinking about it. so there we go. i found my pink fuzzy sounds, and i decided to make that my username because yeah i just love it.
m b v (2013)
tracklist:
- she found now - 5:06 visualizer
- only tomorrow - 6:21
- who sees you - 6:12
- is this and yes - 5:06
- if i am - 3:54
- new you - 4:58
- in another way - 5:30
- nothing is - 3:34
- wonder 2 - 5:51
total length: 46:36
below is copied text from my RYM review :
"i guess [m b v is] my way of reading dark clouds, and going, 'oh, it's gonna rain.'" ~ KS
my bloody valentine is a band known (perhaps infamously) for releasing music strictly on their own schedule... and this album is probably the most perfect example of this. according to Kevin Shields, m b v started production in 1996 - 1997, but the record company "pulled the plug" on him because he reached the amount of money he was allotted to spend on the album. he went off to become a touring member with the band Primal Scream after this, and revisited the album around 2006. he noted that, upon this revisit, he originally thought that this was just going to be finished as a "side project" or EP - that a different album entirely would serve as the follow up to loveless instead of these songs. but, he realized the "theme" of the album appeared more intense to him, and he began to work on it as a separate thing entirely.
so yeah. a very long creation story indeed, that takes place over the span of 22 years. and that "theme"... let me go into this a little bit because this is something i think about whenever i decide whether or not play the album. kevin said that this album has some sorta theme that guided his creative vision for this album that had to do with changes; that the world is heading into a time of change, and the end of a part of a cycle in society or something like that... he said that over time this would make more and more sense. which... is interesting to me. it feels kinda redundant to bring up because, if i didn't read him say this in any interviews or anything, i would've probably never even known about this theme at all. after all, mbv is not really known for having understandable lyrics, focusing more on just pure feeling instead. but i still wanted to mention it because i just really like viewing the album using this lens. i'll get more into this at the very end of this review...
so, let's talk about the songs now. i remember reading someone's comment on youtube about the first track, "she found now", that really stuck with me - they described the first moments of this song as someone turning up the volume knob. the music was always playing, but now it's finally ready to be lifted up in volume for us to hear after so many years. i think that is a beautiful way to describe the first few moments of this album.
this song in particular has never had much of a large presence in my brain. it's probably because of its ambient feeling nature, at least to me. that's not to say it's not amazing, though. we have a very consistent backing melody, of deep-sounding, fuzzy, distorted guitars to form the foundation of the song, with occasional strums that slowly build to create a melody on top of that. and, of course, we have the vocals too. to me, the vocals kinda sound like a tour guide of sorts, introducing us to this new landscape of sound as we dive deeper and deeper into it. another thing about the vocals too... i gotta say, when i first was writing this review i thought that it was kevin singing on this song (i actually felt sure of it) but i still don't know if it's kevin or bilinda. maybe it's both of them at once or something. who knows. but either way, the vocals give me lifeeeeeee it's so beautiful every time i hear it, especially on this song :') there's this one part towards the end where the vocals stop for a minute and you think the song is winding down but then it comes back and it's just such a good feeling.
now, one thing i'd like mention in this part, going into the next song, is that mbv decided to take a very different approach on this album in regards to the transitions between songs. there's a notable absence of codas on this album, which were present on almost every song on loveless. which basically means that the songs have more traditional transitions, with the songs just kinda ending, fading out, or having a brief set of different sounds before taking us to the next track. this is a reason i hesitated to give this album a perfect score for a while, since i felt that the pacing here wasn't as strong as loveless. but, this album should really just be taken in as its own thing and not compared to that album. so, taking it in that way and shelving those expectations, i began to view the flow of the album in a different light, and... it kinda just works? the transitions feel very spontaneous and natural to me now. (probably because i just got used the flow of the album, but still. nothing stands out as feeling like something to critique)
on "she found now", the song ends with just the deep feedback noise of the guitar, and we get a moment of silence before the next song, "only tomorrow", enters the scene.
i'm pretty sure "only tomorrow" just starts with a few simple drum hits... but it scratches my brain so much and i just love the way those specific drums sound. as for the rest of the song... well, it's really amazing. the lyrics i can make out really hit hard for me... they're very abstract and vague, but they've really comforted me a few times. and sometimes the ending, with the main guitar hook repeating over and over again just hits me in a way that only mbv songs can. i also adore the few parts where we hear bilinda's voice just soars up for a few seconds. there's also this one guitar in the back of the song that sounds to me like it's sorta ripping reality apart to me? it's so cool.
after that is "who sees you". man. what a song. i remember reading someone talking about the chord progression on this song - they pointed out how it goes on for like a full minute. i never even realized that before i read that and it's pretty crazy. those chord changes in particular i remember noticing a lot more on my first few listens of this song and really getting blown away by it. and, of course, you have kevin's vocals, which glide effortlessly on top of it all. but, the main star of the show on this song for me is when the song switches to having these high-pitched, wailing guitars. these sounds are just the ultimate form of ear candy for me. i've had moments with this song where these sounds just completely overwhelmed me, and had me wondering how the hell they even exist. there's also some slight chord changes in this part too, that are just so gorgeous and almost nostalgic to me for some reason. i also love how the song ends and begins too. it's very similar to how only shallow begins, with the drum hits, but on this song it kinda feels like it's pushing the song towards me before it starts if that makes any sense?... it gets me every time and is so hype inducing when you don't expect it. as for the ending, the wailing guitars sorta just get faster and faster, until it just abruptly...ends. it feels like i was just running really fast and finally reached the finish line, and the pause before "is this and yes" is a breath of air.
"is this and yes" is very different to everything else in mbv's discography, but i'm extremely glad it exists. it's... a mbv song without any guitars???? what????? but it's still just as beautiful as the songs with guitars???? what?!?!?!???! i just love whatever that synth-sounding thing is that bends and drones throughout the song. bilinda also sings some sounds over it that don't even register as any words of speech at all (to me, which hardly ever happens in my brain), and i love it. ive had times listening to this album where THIS song made me feel the most emotions somehow. its probably one of the purest, prettiest songs i've ever heard honestly.
then we have the two most "Dream Pop-y" songs on this album with "if i am" and "new you". out of these two, i definitely prefer "if i am", even though both of them are still perfect songs. honestly, "if i am" might be one of my favorite mbv songs, in terms of me just wanting to repeat it over and over and over and over and-
what makes that song special for me is how it has these sorta whooomppp whhomp noises in the back with the guitars - if you've heard the song you might know what i'm talking about. bilinda is singing on this one too, and the chorus on this song is just so godly. to me, it sounds like she's saying "ooOOOooo... oooooohhhhh be my lover..... oooooo...." and it's just so romantic feeling i guess :)
and "new you" is probably the least "Shoegaze-y" song on this album. might be the most accessible song on the album as well. kinda dancey, really sweet, bilinda vocals... just a really lovely song.
then we have "in another way", which begins the last third of the album - its most chaotic and experimental section. i like to call this song the tornado song... because... do you hear those guitars in the beginning of this song????? one day when i listened to this i pictured the guitar just summoning a huge cloud of wind and dust to create a massive tornado. and that's honestly what it sounds like at the beginning of the song. and as it continues and maintains this chaotic atmosphere, it almost feels like you're flying away in the tornado it creates.
i also really like the way this song ends. similar a lot of songs on this album, this song ends by having a never ending loop of just this amazing guitar melody. listening to it one night i really started to get reminded of one of the pictures inside of the CD booklet. on the last page it has a picture that looks kinda like an ocean, with a layer of slightly transparent, circular lines that kinda look like vinyl grooves covering the picture. and i think that picture sorta represents how these songs are like "infinite horizons of sound"... the loop could just keep going and going and the song would still work. it's like they reach a point of ultimate ~vibes~ i guess that never makes you want to leave. well... at least i don't. anyways, "in another way"'s ending is cool because i like how it takes that higher pitched sound and just kinda makes it into this one, hovering, connected note that meshes with the drum melody so well right before it ends. it's just awesome.
ok, and now it's time to discuss probably the most polarizing track on the album: "nothing is". (even though according to kevin it's actually a "key track" on the album)
when i first started listening to this album, i felt like the song was a little long... and i kinda viewed it as just something to put on when i wanna stare at the wall and disassociate and overthink about life or something like that. but eventually, the more i listened to the album all the way through and really listened to every little detail happening in this song, it... made sense. A LOT of sense. somehow this song revealed itself to me to be a masterpiece. or maybe i'm crazy idk. i'll just describe it like this: i noticed how all the different layers of sound kinda got pulled back or pushed forwards, and the repetition really highlighted this. it's like a sort of lesson in noticing tiny subtleties. and once i let myself really absorb this and feel it... it was awesome. i love this song so much now. according to kevin, he said that to him this song has a feeling that something is gonna pop, like a building tension just gets more and more throughout the song. and this makes sense to me too, because the song slowly builds in volume and intensity throughout, getting louder and louder until it kinda dies at the end with these drums.
then, after those drums force the polyrhythms of that song out of our brains, we hear a Drum and Bass beat, along with a noise that to me sounds like keys getting jangled in front of my face... indicating that we are about to take flight into the world of "wonder 2".
this is the first song upon listening to this album that i just knew was absolutely perfect. it's just pure insanity, and probably my favorite mbv song barely below "Soon". let me describe it to you in the best way possible...
upon my first listen of this song, my brain immediately gravitated towards imagery of airplanes taking flight all around me, like i was standing directly on a busy runway. i have my headphones in, listening to an mbv song amidst all the chaos, running and trying to avoid being run over by the huge airplanes passing all around me. and... if me imagining that after listening to a song doesn't sound crazy to you, then idk what to say. either way, though, i'm playing this song if i end up inside of an airport again.
also, kevin actually said something about this song that kinda changed the way i hear it. he said that, in making this song, he tried to capture the feeling of moving through a tunnel. (which is reinforced by the fact that they have a trippy tunnel visual in the back when they play this song live now) and that makes so much sense to me as well. the sorta Drum and Bass inspired beat that backs the song makes me feel the same thing that i feel when i put my hand outside the window in a car when its moving, if that makes any sense. it's kinda like they took the sensation of wind passing around you as you fly through a tunnel and made that the basis for the song. and the more i focus on that, the more i get lost in the song, and i almost feel like i'm actually moving even though i'm sitting still...
all i gotta say is... how.
anyways, there's more to this song too. yes, more! and it's the vocals on this song.
i remember the first time i listened to this song, i was getting a bit confused wondering when the vocals were actually going to come in, because they come in a bit later compared to most other mbv songs. i almost thought there was gonna be no vocals at all for the rest of the album, considering that "nothing is" lacked them too. but nope :)
the vocals here almost have the same quality that the song "Soon" has for me, in that every time the vocals come in on this song it's the most euphoric, satisfying thing ever. to use the "tunnel" metaphor mentioned earlier, you could say it switches up the song in a way that kinda sends me down a different tunnel for a bit before sending me back onto the main one.
and i just want to mention one final thing... the name of the song. "wonder 2". i read someone interpreting the title of this song as "wonder where 2?", and to me personally i think that makes a lot of sense. considering what i said at the beginning, about how this album has a theme of changes to society and all that, it makes me think that this song is supposed to represent a curiosity about the future, where you're going through the tunnel towards it and wondering where it'll take you. and, this makes it a perfect closer too, because by the end of the song it kinda sounds like the tunnel collapses in on itself. it's taking you out of the album and throws you down directly back into reality, where... well... you face your future.
and that's it.
album's over, and the music is replaced with a heavy silence.
New Song 1 & 2 (2018)
two new songs they played at their live shows in 2018. istg if these songs never get released i'm gonna lose my mind. they're both masterpieces and i need to hear them in their full glory NOW!!! aaaaaa (btw i drew these pictures for them myself).
video for new song 1
video for new song 2
this interview has a snippet of new song 2 playing in the background...
here are a few quotes from Kevin Shields, the main guitar player in the band, that i find really cool:
"I think we were definitely a bit ahead of our time though, in that we were synergising something that was going to happen anyway. It wasn't that these things were so influenced by us, just that the energy was being born anyway, and we were one of the first puppies out. I don't know if it came from us, but it came through us. But it was trying to get out anyway. Like a leak."
"I got a synth in '81, and I gave up the guitar after about a year of playing it. I thought, "Ah, this is pointless, I'm never going to do anything different. It's all been done." (and then meanwhile he goes on to make loveless 10 years later...)
Explaining how he achieves his guitar effect: "A very loose taped-up tremolo arm on a Fender Jazzmaster, open chording and a few effects," ... "It just happens. It's really like magic. It's more the zone, the meditative state I get into. It has very emotional connotations for me. I have to keep very still when I'm playing. I can't explain it. It is magic."
"Songs and music are so simple in many ways. But there’s a special ingredient that you have no control over, which is just playing something because you enjoy it. It’s very simple and very obvious, but it can actually sort of get the music to work. Whereas if you contrive something, and only make it up and play it because you want it for an intellectual reason, it doesn’t seem to have that magic ingredient anymore."
"When I write music, it’s all contextual, as if every song has its own little soul. At the time it’s written, it makes sense, and then at another time, it can make sense again, but it might not make sense at any given particular time, or it doesn’t resonate in a strong way at that moment."
on releasing the songs on the blue album: "I'm just happy that it was something I could be proud of. I wasn’t too sure until it was finished. I was just personally in love with lots of it. I find that that’s all it really takes. I had a mini-love affair with every song. It’s a mixture of a love affair and having a child or something. I feel this great responsibility towards letting it be born, hopefully, and giving it a life. So all of those songs had that quality."
"I think people wind up being involved in music because it has a huge emotional effect. You have one reality, then you hear this music, then suddenly it's a different reality... I think people that aren't very affected by music don't really like music very much. It just sounds like noise. Annoying sound. The sound of egos going crazy. People that are affected by it emotionally hear the opposite; you hear something that's way bigger than any people, or any thing. That's the funny thing about music."
i really personally relate to the bolded sentence in this quote ^, because music has that exact effect on me as well, and i've never heard anyone put it into words that accurately before...
Interviewer: "So many [mbv] songs are about sex, but there’s nothing carnal or thrusting about them. It’s as far removed from Led Zeppelin as you can get."
Kevin: "Yeah, because their sex songs were about wanting it. We were doing it! It’s from the inside out, rather than the outside in."
"It’s not that altered states of mind weren’t involved [in mbv's music], they were, big time. I had some pretty weird experiences. But that’s what it was, sleep deprivation. That’s what happens when you don’t sleep much. It brings the subconscious into the present world. "
Interviewer: Do you feel a kinship with what Daft Punk did with their [2013] album?
Kevin: "Yeah, I can see where they’re coming from big-time. The whole rebirth of feel is wonderful; I know it sounds silly, but the computer is a fool, and feeling is God. I’ve always quite liked Daft Punk. When I first heard them, I thought, "Oh, they’re really into that mid-range sound." The French were always masters at mid-range. And I like the attitude."
Interviewer: "do you think `the cherry kerrs' is a stupid name for a band?"
Kevin: "No more stupid than My Bloody Valentine"
