10 Perfect Indie Albums Of The 1990s
5. Loveless - My Bloody Valentine
No two people listen to the same piece of music the same way. Some might want to focus on the lyrical structure while others might be the guitar nerds that are looking to pick out all of the great riffs in a song. Then again, if you thrown on something like Loveless, it demands to be listened to in only one way: sinking into your psyche.
Being one of the first shoegaze albums to define the genre, the amount of distortion and fuzz on this record is about as subtle as the image of a guitar on the front, putting on layers of guitars until everything starts to blend together. Even though there is no chance that any of these songs could work well in an acoustic setting, the noise behind everything ends up feeling strangely soothing by the end of the experience.
Just one listen of a song like Only Shallow is a good proof of concept for the whole thing. Things are going haywire in the background and the backing track sounds like it could descend into madness, and then Bilinda Butcher's beautiful voice comes in and brings everything back down to Earth. Most albums just try to write a handful of decent tunes and leave it at that. With Loveless, it sounds like My Bloody Valentine are trying to tap into the next life through sheer force behind their instruments.