Brian Eno With Kevin Shields, “The Weight of History” (2018)

[listen up! (9:12)]

Here’s one of those special Record Store Day products that’s definitely worth a listen. Full disclosure, I still have not made a Record Store Day purchase. This lengthy track was released as one side of a so-called double-A-sided 12-inch single. It comes of a collaboration between ambient meister Brian Eno and My Bloody Valentine principal Kevin Shields, an association that feels so natural it also feels overdue for 2018. The other side of the 12-inch, “Only Once Away My Son,” was recorded in 2017, but that’s not much better. As a dirge, “The Weight of History” feels haunted, with foghorn bottoms, unexpected crackling textures, winsome melody, and moaning. In many ways it seems most like just another artifact in Eno’s ambient gallery. But if there’s one thing Eno is good at (and actually there are many) it’s collaborating. Shields and MBV had a reputation for making the loudest music anyone had ever heard in concert, and the albums were decked out with dense layers of feedback and other churning, vibrating noise as setting for delicate melodies. Eno provides the gently lilting tape loops here while Shields works his gentled tremolo-based distortions. Google AI, which sounds like a fan, lets it rip (sourced to Wikipedia and GuitarGangsters.net): “Shields scales back the aggressive, wall-shaking volume of My Bloody Valentine in favor of micro-textured ambient architecture. He swaps explosive distortion for subtle, process-driven soundfields that lock into Brian Eno's generative and tape-loop aesthetics.... Instead of aggressive whammy-bar chord sweeps, Shields applies his signature pitch-bending tremolo control to sustain string whines and single-note drones, keeping the pitch gently drifting and ‘out of tune’ by micro-intervals.” All I can add is: Yup. No wonder people get hooked on using our future robot overlords to help write.

My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless (2006)

In many ways Mike McGonigal’s entry in the 33-1/3 series feels like a template for how to do it, but I’m not sure I can put my finger on why exactly. For one thing Loveless is not so obviously a classic album, at least within the boomer frame that is inevitably a big part of this series and my own perceptions (by default if nothing else—boomer albums have just had more time to grow classic). McGonigal mixes up the structure so many of these authors take: 1) a history of the artist, and 2) the album track by track. His rundown of the songs is fast and high-level, for example, showing up in the second chapter of 17. The rest of the book does involve a history, specifically of how the album was recorded, why it took so long, and why nothing else (at the time the book was published in 2006), or very little, had been recorded and released by My Bloody Valentine since. I never saw MBV but I owned Loveless in the early ‘90s, which struck me itself as a certain template for shoegaze and maybe some aspects of grunge: a thundering bottom, on top of which floated lovely melody in the high register, ghostly, ethereal, and often quite striking, heard through cacophonies of distortion. I played it a lot. Listening again with more perspective, it’s apparent MBV was something unusual and special. It was as if they took the dynamics formulas and smeared them sideways slightly, like fingerpainting. McGonigal gets into MBV principal Kevin Shields’s use of the guitar tremolo bar, an auditory concept Shields applied to every part of the project. The lyrics are swallowed up and work more like rorschach if you’re inclined to pay attention to lyrics. The band was legendary for deafeningly loud concerts. Some of the effects McGonigal and others have described veer alarmingly close to physical damage. It often sounds like evidence of tinnitus but at the same time with spiritual overtones. I especially like the way McGonigal deals with this aspect of the album and band. He’s not overtly claiming spiritual experiences but read between the lines. He circles the album and its impact, somehow managing to keep it all straightforward, lucid, and compelling. I didn’t necessarily recognize it at the time, but there’s little question now of the status of Loveless as classic. McGonigal was among the many faithful. He almost casually, deceptively makes the case for how the album works, which is remarkable given that most words simply fall short in this kind of heady realm. This book is not necessarily as classic as the album, but it comes closer than you might think it could.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

Loveless (1991)

"Only Shallow" At the time this came out, many descriptions of My Bloody Valentine pegged them as loudest band ever in concert. You felt the music more than heard it, word went. Earplugs advised. You can hear that here, for sure, and at whatever volume suits you. As with any of the delightfully labeled shoegaze bands, feedback and dense walls of bludgeoning roar largely set the tone. But then the wispies, the creamy filling of shoegaze, float through for purposes of contrast and inflection: strange little guitar noises, breathlessly lovely melodies, open-mouthed sha-la-la vocals that whip around the mix like shreds of paper caught in the wind. After several years of such insinuation, and compulsive listening, it finally becomes a favorite. A "classic," even.

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