My Bloody Valentine

All Music Guide:

Like the Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, and the Jesus and Mary Chain before them, My Bloody Valentine redefined what noise meant within the context of pop songwriting. Led by guitarist Kevin Shields, the group released several EPs in the mid-'80s before recording the era-defining Isn't Anything in 1988, a record that merged lilting, ethereal melodies of the Cocteau Twins with crushingly loud, shimmering distortion. Though My Bloody Valentine rejected rock & roll conventions, they didn't subscribe to the precious tendencies of anti-rock art-pop bands. Instead, they rode crashing waves of white noise to unpredictable conclusions, particularly since their noise wasn't paralyzing like the typical avant-garde noise rock band: it was translucent, glimmering, and beautiful. Shields was a perfectionist, especially when it came to recording, as much of My Bloody Valentine's sound was conceived within the studio itself. Nevertheless, the band was known as a formidable live act, even though they rarely moved, or even looked at the audience, while they were on-stage. Their notorious lack of movement was branded "shoegazing" by the British music press, and soon there were legions of other shoegazers -- Ride, Lush, the Boo Radleys, Chapterhouse, Slowdive -- that, along with the rolling dance-influenced Madchester scene, dominated British indie rock of the late '80s and early '90s. As shoegazing reached its peak in 1991, My Bloody Valentine released Loveless, which broke new sonic ground and was hailed as a masterpiece. Though the band was poised for a popular breakthrough, it disappeared into the studio and didn't emerge over the next five years, leaving behind a legacy that proved profoundly influential in the direction of '90s alternative rock.

Born in Queens, New York, Kevin Shields' family moved to Dublin, Ireland, when he was six years old. In his teens, he became obsessed with pop music, eventually playing in Complex with his childhood friend Colm O'Ciosoig. In 1984, Shields and O'Ciosoig formed My Bloody Valentine with vocalist Dave Conway and keyboardist Tina, taking their name from a slasher horror film. The group relocated to Berlin, where they released the Birthday Party-influenced EP This Is Your Bloody Valentine on the Tycoon label in 1985 to little notice. The following year, the band moved to London, where they added bassist Debbie Googe. By the summer, they had signed to Fever and had released the EP Geek!, which again was ignored. Later that year, the group moved to Kaleidoscope Sound, releasing The New Record by My Bloody Valentine EP, which illustrated a Jesus & Mary Chain influence. The following year, the band moved to the Primitives' Lazy Records, releasing Sunny Sundae Smile early in the year. That EP was the first My Bloody Valentine record to mesh airy melodies with grinding guitars, but the two EPs that followed in 1987 -- Strawberry Wine and Ecstasy -- were more focused and acclaimed. Conway left the band by the end of the year and was replaced by vocalist/guitarist Bilinda Butcher, whose breathy vocals fit the group's evolving sound more appropriately.

My Bloody Valentine's new sound coalesced with the group's first full-fledged album, 1988's Isn't Anything. Released on Creation Records, Isn't Anything was greeted with enthusiastic reviews in the U.K. music press and the band's following increased dramatically by the end of the year; in fact, their reputation had become large enough to attract the attention of Sire/Warner Bros. in the U.S., who became the group's American label. Two other EPs, Feed Me With Your Kiss and You Made Me Realise, were also quite popular, and by the beginning of 1989, bands that based their sound on My Bloody Valentine's droning swirl began to appear. The group retreated to the studio in 1989 to record its follow-up, which meant that only one EP, Glider, was released during that year. By the spring of 1990, it was becoming clear that the follow-up to Isn't Anything wouldn't be appearing anytime soon, and reports about Shields' growing perfectionism began to circulate in the U.K. weekly music press. Soon, it became apparent that the band's lengthy recording sessions were crippling Creation Records, but the group's audience was still passionate despite the inactivity: the Tremolo EP was released at the end of 1990 to considerable acclaim, and managed to climb into the U.K. Top 40.

When My Bloody Valentine's second album, Loveless, finally appeared in late 1991, it was greeted with uniformly excellent reviews and it became a hit within the U.K., reaching number 24 on the charts. In America, the group made significant inroads, particularly by supporting Dinosaur Jr. Despite the band's acclaim and growing audience, Loveless didn't sell in numbers to recoup its reported 500,000 dollar recording cost and Creation dropped the band from their label roster; Creation wouldn't fully recover until 1994, when they signed Oasis. My Bloody Valentine signed with Island and entered the studio at the end of 1992 to record a new album. In 1993, the group contributed a James Bond cover to a charity compilation.

And then...nothing happened.

Shields built a home studio with his Island advance and reportedly completed two separate albums, but scrapped them both. Often, the studio ran into technological problems. Between 1993 and 1997, both Googe and O'Ciosoig left the band, leaving only Shields and Butcher; after driving a cab for about a year, Googe formed Snowpony in 1996. There were signs that My Bloody Valentine were emerging from hiding in 1996, when the group contributed to the Wire tribute album Whore and Shields played on Experimental Audio Research's Beyond the Pale. In the late 2000s, the band re-formed to play several shows, including a five-night residency at London's Roundhouse venue in June 2008; that summer and autumn, they played the European festival circuit as well as major cities in North America, including the All Tomorrow's Parties festival they curated in Monticello, New York, that September. In 2009 they embarked on a smaller round of dates, with dates in the Netherlands as well as the All Tomorrow's Parties "Nightmare Before Christmas" festival that December. Late in 2012, Shields announced that My Bloody Valentine had completed a new album, but no firm release date was mentioned. The album, mbv, arrived in February 2013.

Wikipedia:

My Bloody Valentine are an alternative rock band formed in Dublin, Ireland in 1983. The band's lineup has consisted since 1987 of founding members Kevin Shields (guitar and vocals) and Colm Ó Cíosóig (drums) with singer-guitarist Bilinda Butcher and bassist Debbie Googe.

As My Bloody Valentine's music evolved, their use of distortion, pitch bending, and digital reverb resulted in a sound that came to be known as shoegazing. The group's seminal 1991 album Loveless, which took nearly two years to make and nearly bankrupted their record label Creation Records, received extensive critical acclaim and remains iconic. Following Loveless, My Bloody Valentine became inactive, with Shields rumoured to have recorded - and shelved - several albums' worth of songs. In mid-2007, Shields announced that the band had reunited and were working on new material. The band subsequently toured across Europe and the U.S. The band's third album, m b v, was released in 2013.

History [edit]

Early history (1978-1985) [edit]

Kevin Shields and Colm Ó Cíosóig met in late 1978 as teenagers in Dublin. The pair became friends in what is described as "an almost overnight friendship" and later formed The Complex, a local punk rock band, in 1979. The Complex featured guitarist Liam Ó Maonlaí. Shields described the band as "what all the nerds and weirdos actually do as opposed to the cool people with the leather jackets" and said "we started rehearsing, it was an every Sunday kind of thing." In 1981, Ó Maonlai left The Complex to form Hothouse Flowers, and Shields and Ó Cíosóig decided to form another band with vocalist David Conway, who performed under the pseudonym Dave Stelfox. Conway suggested a number of names, including Burning Peacocks, before the band settled on My Bloody Valentine. It is unclear whether Conway took the name from the 1981 horror film My Bloody Valentine.

Soon after recording the demo tape, Ivers left the band and Conway's girlfriend, Tina Durkin, joined as a keyboard player. Around this time, Shields contacted Gavin Friday of the Dublin post-punk band The Virgin Prunes. According to Shields, he met Friday in Finglas and asked "look, we're in a group, have you got any advice?" to which Friday replied "get out of Dublin." Friday gave the band contacts that secured them a show in Tilburg, Netherlands. The band moved to the Netherlands after the show and lived there for nine months, opening for R.E.M. on one occasion on 8 April 1984. Due to a lack of opportunities and a lack of correct documentation, the band then relocated to West Berlin, Germany in late 1984 and recorded its debut mini album, This Is Your Bloody Valentine. The album failed to receive much attention, and the band temporarily returned to the Netherlands, before settling in London, United Kingdom in the middle of 1985.

Settling in London (1986-1987) [edit]

After a period when My Bloody Valentine members lost contact with each other as they looked for places to stay, the band regrouped and decided to audition bass players. The band lacked a regular bassist and Conway's girlfriend had decided to leave the band, not feeling confident in her abilities as a keyboard player. Having been given the telephone number of a bass player in London, Debbie Googe, they invited her to audition, and, ultimately, to join the band, fitting in rehearsals around her day job. Conway was the main songwriter in the early line-up, with Shields describing the process: "for each song he'd write about 3 pages of lyrics and usually me and Colm would pick out the bits we liked and David would sing that".

At this point the band were rehearsing at Salem Studios, which was connected to the record label Fever Records. Impressed by what they heard, Fever agreed to release an EP. On the strength of this, Googe left her job, and the EP, titled Geek! was released in April 1986. The band soon began to play on the London gig circuit, but the record failed to make as much of an impact as the band had hoped. With the band's slow progress, Shields contemplated moving back to New York, where some of his family were living.

However, Joe Foster, an associate of Creation Records, had decided to set up his own label, Kaleidoscope Records, and persuaded the group to record for him. The EP, The New Record by My Bloody Valentine, was the result, released in October 1986. The band also began to step up their live appearances, developing a small following and venturing outside London for gigs supporting bands like the Membranes.

The band's next record was Sunny Sundae Smile, an EP released in March 1987 by Lazy Records, a label set up by The Primitives with their manager Wayne Morris. The label had been interested in My Bloody Valentine for a while. The band then spent a few months performing in London and managed to secure a support slot with the Soup Dragons. During the shows with the Soup Dragons, Conway announced his decision to leave the band; he had been suffering with a gastric illness for a while and had become disillusioned with music. Conway has since pursued a career as a writer.

Conway departs and Butcher joins (1987-1988) [edit]

Conway's departure left the band without a vocalist, a situation they decided to remedy by placing advertisements in the music press. This process proved tortuous, Shields noting, "It was pretty dangerous, I made the mistake of mentioning The Smiths because we liked their melodies, the whole thing was disastrous and excruciating, you should have seen some of the fruitballs we got."

The band eventually turned to recommendations and experimented with having two vocalists: Bilinda Butcher and Joe Byfield. It soon became apparent that Byfield was unsuited to the band, and Shields took on second vocalist duties alongside Butcher; he noted she "sounded all right and she could sing one of our songs which sounded fine, we just had to show her how to play guitar". Shields was initially reluctant to take on a vocal role, but stated in 1988 "I've always sung in the rehearsal room, I've always made up the melodies." With the new line-up in place, the band intended to leave the My Bloody Valentine moniker behind, but according to Ó Cíosóig "we never could think of a good enough name".

Under pressure from Lazy Records to produce an album, the band compromised, citing the need for time to stabilize their line-up. The band agreed to record an EP followed by a mini LP. The EP, Strawberry Wine, consisted of three tracks and was released in November 1987. The mini-LP, titled Ecstasy, followed soon after in December. The EP has been described as "certainly the better of the two releases". Ecstasy has been criticized as showing "a group who appeared to have run out of money halfway through recording", which was indeed the case. Ecstasy also suffered from production difficulties, as Shields described errors in mastering the recordings. These hardships were not surprising as the band were funding the studio time themselves; The deal with Lazy was that the label would do the promotion, the band paying for the recording.

Creation Records (1988-1991) [edit]

In January 1988 My Bloody Valentine played a gig with Biff Bang Pow!, a band that featured Creation Records owner Alan McGee as a member. The performance convinced McGee that they were the Irish equivalent to American band Hüsker Dü, and he approached the band after the show. The band decided to record a single for the label. My Bloody Valentine recorded five songs at a studio in Walthamstow in east London in less than a week. Released as the EP You Made Me Realise, the release was the band's first to be largely well received by critics. The group followed with the EP Feed Me with Your Kiss and the album Isn't Anything (1988). The band's multi-layered guitar sound became a major influence on a number of new bands who the British music press grouped together under the shoegazing label.

My Bloody Valentine began work on their second full-length album in February 1989. Shields said that Creation Records thought the album could be recorded "in five days"; he later recalled, "But when it became clear that wasn't going to happen, they freaked." Work continued throughout the year. Shields and McGee agreed to release an EP prior to the album's release, so the band recorded Glider, which was released in 1990. In May 1990 the band recorded a second EP, Tremolo (1991). The band halted work on the album in order to tour behind the release of Glider in Summer 1990.

It ultimately took My Bloody Valentine two years to finish their second album Loveless (1991). The making of the album was rumored to have cost £250,000 and to have nearly bankrupted Creation Records, claims which Shields has denied. Reviews of Loveless were almost unanimous with praise. The NME review of Loveless declared, "...however decadent one might find the idea of elevating other human beings to deities, My Bloody Valentine, failings and all, deserve more than your respect". However, the album failed to perform commercially. Loveless peaked at number 24 on the British album charts, and failed to chart in the United States, where it was distributed by Sire Records. McGee dropped My Bloody Valentine from Creation soon after the album's release because he could not bear working with Shields again; "It was either him or me", he told The Guardian in 2004.

Remastered editions of Isn't Anything, Loveless and a compilation of their EPs from 1988-1991 were released in May 2012.

Post-Creation (1992-2006) [edit]

My Bloody Valentine signed with Island Records in October 1992, reportedly for £250,000. The band spent their advance on constructing a studio in a house in Streatham. The studio was completed in April 1993, but problems with the studio and attempts to repair them sent the band into "semi-meltdown" according to Shields.

The group recorded very little, which included the contribution of a cover of a James Bond theme song to a charity compilation ("We Have All the Time in the World"), and a cover of the Wire song "Map Ref. 41 Degrees N 93 Degrees W" for the tribute album Whore: Tribute to Wire. Unable to finalise a third album, Shields isolated himself and, in his own words, went "crazy", drawing comparisons in the music press to the behavior of musicians such as Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys and Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd. The other band members went their own ways during the period of inactivity following Loveless: Butcher contributed vocals to Collapsed Lung's 1996 single "Board Game", Googe had been sighted working as a cab driver in London and formed the supergroup Snowpony in 1996, O'Ciosoig joined Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions, while Shields collaborated with Yo La Tengo, Primal Scream, and Dinosaur Jr.

Rumors spread among fans of albums being recorded and then shelved. In 1999, it was reported that Shields had delivered 60 hours of material to Island. According to sources, one was possibly influenced by jungle music. Shields later confirmed that at least one full album of new material was abandoned. He said, "We did an album's worth of half-finished stuff, and it did just get dumped, but it was worth dumping. It was dead. It hadn't got that spirit, that life in it." Shields later said to Magnet magazine, "We are 100 percent going to make another My Bloody Valentine record unless we die or something", and attributed the band's sparse output to a lack of inspiration.

Reunion (2007-2011) [edit]

In 2007 Shields announced that the band had reunited and that a new album they had started recording in 1996 was "3/4th finished". That August, Internet rumors claimed that the band were negotiating a performance at the 2008 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival or were planning a world tour. Vinita Joshi, Kevin Shields' then-manager, said "there are no confirmed shows at all".

On 15 November 2007, My Bloody Valentine announced three upcoming live gigs in London for June 2008 which later turned into a 5 night residency at the Roundhouse in London. On 13 and 14 June, the band played in public for the first time in fifteen years, offering a pair of 'Live Rehearsal' presentations at the ICA in London and officially starting their series of comeback performances.

The band went on to play a slew of festivals in Summer and Fall of 2008, which included the Roskilde Festival (Denmark, 3–6 July), Festival Internacional de Benicàssim (Spain, 17–20 July.), Fuji Rock Festival 08 (Japan, 25–27 July), Øyafestivalen (Oslo, Norway, 5–8 August) and The Electric Picnic Festival (Ireland, 29–31 August), and Bestival 2008 (Isle of Wight, 5–7 September). On 19–21 September, My Bloody Valentine curated and performed at the 2008 All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Monticello, New York.

Following the festivals, the band played dates in New York, Chicago, Toronto, Denver, San Francisco, LA, and Austin in late September, early October.

Following their appearance at the All Tomorrows Parties festival, the New York Times reported that Shields was planning to complete the unfinished album: "I realized that all that stuff I was doing in 1996 and 1997 was a lot better than I thought."

The band played an exclusive small capacity club show at the Effenaar club in Eindhoven, Netherlands on 25 May 2009.

On 1 August 2009, the band performed at the All Points West Music & Arts Festival in Jersey City, New Jersey.

My Bloody Valentine curated, and played on 3 nights of, the All Tomorrow's Parties 'Nightmare Before Christmas' festival in December 2009, where they were obliged to perform on a smaller stage due to noise level issues.

m b v (2012-present) [edit]

In November 2012 Kevin Shields announced plans to release a third My Bloody Valentine album in an interview with NME. He stated plans to release it on his website before the end of 2012, and said the album's release would be followed by a series of live shows. On 24 December 2012, it was announced via the band's Facebook page that the album had been completed three days earlier on the 21st. On 27 January 2013, during their first concert since 2009, the band played a new song labeled "rough song", according to a photo of a setlist that looks to be sitting on the soundboard. During that same concert, Kevin Shields told the audience that the third album "might be out in two or three days". The album, titled m b v, was released on the 2 February 2013 at 11:58 pm, although the server crashed as soon as the album was released. In response, the band made the album available on YouTube, albeit a low sound quality version.

Members [edit]

Sources [edit]