Zachary Bombardier – Contributor

The late 1980s to early 1990s witnessed the rise of shoegaze, a species of rock characterized by its expansive atmospherics, a love for noise and effect pedals and the haze of psychedelic rock. My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, released in 1991, not only inherited these features but perfected them. To listen to this album is to enter the lotus-eater’s most ecstatic and supreme high, an experience buzzing with sound and colour. 

Image courtesy of Latoya Simms

The come-up is immediate as the first four tracks plunge into clamor. “Only Shallow” rushes with an elephantine blast of noise that dissolves into an incessant, soothing sea wash. It fades to the grumbles of “Loomer,” a song harbouring whale calls from deep inside its waves of sound. Natural life is soon juxtaposed with death as wails of ghosts beam from “Touched.” By the time “To Here Knows When” is reached, it is a total sea-churn: pure hubbub reigns as guitars grind out a cascade of sound, its whirlpool dynamics almost drowning the delicate voice that surfs the storm. Above all the noise, however, there sparkles misty, flutelike notes, captivating in their seeming fragility. One can only leave these songs feeling anchored to something vast, envelopping and resplendent. 

When stability returns as familiar pop structures in songs like “When You Sleep,” “I Only Said” and “Come in Alone,” it returns warped and distorted. Melodies are blurry like trying to see underwater. Voices drift through these immense songs like the voices of sirens to seafarers, but they speak no discernible language. If a temporary sense flickers from this glossolalia, it is soon destroyed by the large, crushing guitars, a reminder that Loveless communicates more through the textures of sound than meaning. 

Its pop sensibility is slowed down on “Sometimes.” Where the album so often overwhelms, the gentle strums and subdued vocals of the former are a welcome moment of repose. That same repose also carries over into the spume-like density of “Blown A Wish.” How different both songs compare to the flooding energy of “What You Want,” gushing as though renewed with rain, and the almost danceable “Soon,” marked by the euphoria of a high’s comedown or an unexpected sunrise that calms the waters and pushes every gray cloud from the sky. Loveless is a record of immersion, not clarity. Its songs are awash in a boisterous mass of sound and colour the lotus-eater would experience, leaving the listener no choice but to surrender to each song and let themselves be carried off wherever the streams take them. Looking back more than three decades later, it remains the pinnacle of shoegaze, unrivaled in its depth and its sonic achievements.