Gig review: My Bloody Valentine, Barrowland, Glasgow

EXPECTATIONS of this show – one of legendarily loud and enigmatic Irish indie quartet My Bloody Valentine’s first UK dates in support of 22-years-in-coming new album mbv – towered as absurdly high as their famously fussy bandleader/guitarist Kevin Shields’s stack of amplifiers.

My Bloody Valentine

Barrowland, Glasgow

****

And yet like said record – the successor to 1991’s seminal Loveless – it just about lived up to its promise.

Anyone uninitiated to My Bloody Valentine’s brand of by-turns dreamy and nightmarish noise would have been within their rights to wonder what all the fuss was about. To the right and left respectively of drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig and bassist Debbie Googe, a typically sullen-looking Sheilds and guitarist/singer Bilinda Butcher dredged effects-swathed sounds from their vast array of trademark Fender Jaguar and Jazzmaster guitars, while whispering vocals so contrastingly quiet as to make you wonder whether their microphones were working.

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But it’s this very peculiarity and boffin-like approach that makes My Bloody Valentine special. The swirling I Only Said felt something akin to music half-heard on the verge of sleep; the sickly melody of Come In Alone seemed to recreate the room-spinning sensation of a rush of nausea. You Made Me Realise’s furious clatter was split by a signature eardrum-vaporisingly nihilistic five minutes of one chord being churned repeatedly – effecting a sound and sensation akin to opening a car window on the motorway.

The new album’s best and final track, wonder 2, closed the show, as all four members strapped on Jaguar or Jazzmaster guitars – a sight so practically self-parodic it must have been intentional – to layer sweet cacophony over a hurtling drum and bass beat, before slipping off back into the shadows with a meek “thanks” from Shields.

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