On this date in 1991, Loveless was released. And rock ‘n’ roll, it’s never been the same again ever since.
Loveless is the second studio album by My Bloody Valentine. The Irish-English band hired nineteen different studios and several engineers during the album’s prolonged recording, with its final production cost rumoured to have reached £250,000 (equivalent to £480,000 in 2021).
Released in the UK by Creation Records, 𝘓𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 reached number 24 on the UK Albums Chart and was widely praised by critics for its sonic innovations and the guitarist and vocalist Kevin Shields’ “virtual reinvention of the guitar”. However, after its release, Creation owner Alan McGee dropped the band from the label as he found Shields too difficult to work with, a factor alleged to have contributed to the label’s eventual bankruptcy. MBV struggled to record a follow-up to the album and broke up in 1997, making 𝘓𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 their last full-length release until m b v in 2013.
Since its release, Loveless has been widely cited by critics as one of the greatest albums of all time, a landmark work of the shoegaze subgenre. Pitchfork ranked it no. 1 as the best album of the 1990s: “Every time you put on Loveless, the music changes, the emotion shifts, the ceremony is never the same. That’s where its power comes from: its reptilian ability to survive and evolve, to stand for the belief that the best albums are not just something you listen to but something you become a part of.”
I saw MBV in Sydney in 2013. A historical day for me, it was the very day I understood the meaning of “beautiful noise”.
Happy 31st anniversary, Loveless!
• Read also MBV – ONLY SHALLOW.
