See also: m b v the much anticipated 2013 album by above band, a 22 years-in-the-making followup to their most influential work, 1991's Loveless.
See also: My Boring Vacation, in which this highly anticipated album was released during, and where I failed to get a chance to listen to said album in a timely fashion.
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| This "MBV' applies to none. |
Out of town for the weekend, I ended up at a family friend's house, where a Super Bowl Party was set to be held on February 3rd, 2013. Football has never held a whole lot of interest for me, but a party is a party and I wasn't going to be a downer. So, mid-afternoon on February 2nd I hear about My Bloody Valentine (from some phone-text savvy music loving types back home) setting a release for a new full-length album at midnight. At first this seemed like a joke, as these beloved alt-rockers (a term beloved by all) had been "working on a new album" for most of my life, but no, this was true, and I was, seemingly, mere hours away from hearing new music from a longtime favorite band.
I don't go into new albums by "classic" bands expecting peak-period greatness. I also don't take it easy on them, as... well, Sonic Youth made Rather Ripped 25 years into their career, while in the same interval the Rolling Stones made Dirty Work (not a musical based on the influential, beloved, and revered film of the same name starring Norm Macdonald, but this); great work is possible with some effort. Mostly, though, I try to just take on any new album as just a collection of music and avoid the context of the artist's career for the first few listens. If a "legacy" artist delivers the goods, awesome, if they don't well, they still made some good records so, whatever. Life goes on. So, I wasn't trembling with anticipation for m b v, but I was certainly interested.
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| Every mystery of life is locked in this blurry image, we just have to KEEP STARING!! |
But... I was with some friends that I never see, so a bar trip was in the cards for the evening of the release. Maybe one of these friends knew what a new My Bloody Valentine album meant to over-thinkers like myself, but it was not really a plausible excuse to cut out. And I didn't drive myself. So, 2 AM rolls around and, back at my weekend digs, I miss the already legendary website server crash of fans trying to download m b v at midnight, but early reviews are already making their rounds. I decided that I needed fresh ears to listen and wouldn't read any of the reviews, so this potential masterwork of alleged genius will wait until the morning. The morning... where my hosts are having people over for the Super Bowl, preceded by a blues jam by some of the parents and their friends. I'm finally starting to tremble, but it's a weird sort of anxiety that I'm not acting on the reality of something speculated on during some late-night Loveless listens with friends a few years back and less anticipation to hear new music. A ponytailed 50-something guitar player guy at this pre-Super Bowl blues jam finds me attempting to listen to some youtube streams of the first few songs on m b v through shitty laptop speakers and I don't think he thought I was listening to music. m b v would have to wait another day.
So, I've listened to it finally. It's good. Especially the last few tunes. It sounds like My Bloody Valentine, but also like they're working on some new ideas. It's not the most groin-grabbingly transcendent thing I've ever heard, but it went down easy and I'll listen to it again. There. I did it. Now I know I can wait til the vinyl edition is in stores in a few weeks... but, until then...
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