Here's the final draft of a compare/contrast essay I wrote for English. It gets turned in tomorrow, but something still seems a little off about it, so I wanted to know if anyone here has a tip or two they'd like to offer. Suggestions for the title would also be cool.
Ever
since it emerged over half a century ago, the musical phenomenon of rock and
roll has been constantly expanding and reshaping itself. Originally, it was an
easily definable genre that revolved around a certain blend of country and
blues with a steady backbeat. But since then, it has taken many twists and
turns, donning and shedding skins as popular culture demands it and scattering
myriad subgenres in its indelible wake. Rock has reinvented itself so much and
so radically, in fact, that there are some who believe that by now the
potential of the genre has been completely sapped and there are no more
innovations to be found within it.
If
there’s one band that can change this view, provide a beacon of hope for the
future of rock, and illuminate the depths to which it has not yet been tapped,
it is My Bloody Valentine. After creating a large amount of goth-tinged
post-punk in the mid-to-late eighties, MBV shattered the music world’s
preconceptions about rock and almost singlehandedly defined the burgeoning
scene of “shoegazing” music with their 1991 album Loveless. However, an unfortunate side effect of the acclaim they
received for this release was the total overshadowing of their back catalog.
Even to this day, the band’s earlier work is mostly regarded as nothing but a
build-up to Loveless, and is rarely
appreciated for its own merit. This is something of a tragedy, since these
songs, while perhaps not as good in individual quality as the material on Loveless, are in their own right quality
works of music.
The
most important reason one is still able to enjoy MBV’s back catalog is the
sheer sonic difference in the music compared to the sound that defined Loveless. In fact, a listener unfamiliar
with the band would almost certainly be unable to distinguish the album from
their first release, 1985’s EP This Is
Your Bloody Valentine. This album’s extensive use of synthesizers, reverb,
and original lead singer Dave Conway’s off-kilter baritone voice showcased the
band’s initial tendencies towards gothic rock and combined them with raw,
sparse, high-energy post-punk. If this had been all the band had ever produced,
perhaps they still would’ve been regarded as an underground treasure, though
much less well-known.
The
band continued making music in this fashion until Conway left in 1987. This
would later prove to be an immense turning point in their sound. Unable to find
a new fulltime vocalist, lead guitarist and main creative force Kevin Shields
took over the position with assistance from new rhythm guitarist Bilinda
Butcher. Shields’ lack of confidence in his singing ability and Butcher’s
naturally soft, feathery voice were a drastic change from Conway’s strong,
bombastic crooning. Thus, with the band keeping their instrumentation as loud
as ever, the vocals seemed to drift along somewhere lower in the mix, creating
an androgynous and almost indecipherable vocal ambience that would later become
one of their hallmarks.
However,
it was MBV’s next release, 1988’s You
Made Me Realise, that truly began to give tell of the sound the band was
destined to create. The eponymous first track actually recalled their material
with Conway a good deal, except this time with Butcher’s soft vocalizations
filling in the sonic cracks left by the jagged, angular guitars. But after this
quick assault, the second track, “Slow,” begins by introducing a strange and
altogether new sound for the band, as a meandering, tremulous, and
highly-processed tape loop weaves its way through the speakers. If you had
bought this record when it first came out, you might have thought to take it
off and check it for warps at this point, but before you have time to adapt to
this unfamiliar turn of events, the guitar comes in; it also is different from
traditional MBV canon. The sound is denser, heavier, and fuzzier. It still
contains a similar aggression to what fans are used to hearing, yet somehow it
also creates a soft blend from the music, causing it to lose focus in places.
The tape loop, as has now become apparent, serves as a drone through the entire
track, aiding this process. The song is vaguely comparable to—and to some ears,
could even be considered a herald of—the grunge music of the early ‘90s. One
more oddball track like this makes its way into the album, “Cigarette in Your
Bed,” which shows the future sound of MBV even more distinctly than “Slow.” The
mix of tape loop, whispery acoustic, and passive, ultra-fuzzy electric guitars
create a dense and detailed texture that almost seems to fold over onto itself,
and Butcher’s lead vocals on the track solidify the sense of thick delicacy. It
is perhaps the first song ever released that fell squarely into the grounds of
the shoegazing genre. Their next releases,1988’s EP Feed Me With Your Kiss and their first LP the same year, Isn’t Anything, would have similar
qualities, only this time injecting a little more aggressiveness back into the
music again and piling the denseness and softness back on top of it. The combination of the harshness of the band’s
past and the swirling softness of their future seen in these three albums—You Made Me Realise in
particular—created moods and tones that would never be captured again in future
releases, including Loveless, and
thus documented a unique and altogether satisfying creative period for MBV.
Then,
in 1989, they set to work on Loveless—though
it might be more accurate to say “he,” because Shields wrote and recorded
almost all of the tracks by himself. It would prove to be a grueling process,
taking two years to finish; this was due largely to Shields’ unwillingness to
make any compromises regarding his creative vision for the album, and his
inability to explain it thoroughly to anyone else involved in production. Upon
listening to it, one could sympathize with this conundrum, because when the
arduous process was finally completed—during which the band also released two
more EPs and reportedly cost their record label anywhere from 160 to 250
thousand British pounds—the product was magnificent to behold. Loveless emits textures, moods, and
imagery that nobody had ever realized could exist in a rock idiom. Warmth seems
to radiate with a strong pulse from somewhere deep within the heart of its
enormous sonic density, yet the music is in the same moment subdued,
thoughtful, and almost uncomfortably intimate. The vocals, and even (perhaps especially)
the guitar sounds seem to come out of nowhere, and powerful melodies emerge in
places where you’re not even sure there are any definite notes being played. At
times, it can even become difficult to tell whether the sounds you’re hearing
are soft or harsh, or both at the same time; in fact, every bit of existence
outside of the music, including any traditional standards of measurement, seem
to be diminished, perhaps even destroyed. The listener is left with no
reference point with which to immediately decipher the music, and is almost
forced to simply experience it. Such a sensation had never been achieved in
rock music before nor has been since.
However,
Loveless, for whatever sound it seems
to dig up out of the forgotten depths of rock’s potential, still represents
just one sound and one musical experience, and as majestic as it is, it still
can’t seem to negate the musical endeavors that preceded it. Those little EPs
scattered across the eighties somehow maintain in the shadow of the sonic giant
that pushed them out of the public eye so efficiently. Perhaps if MBV had been
making their trademark shoegazing music for their entire career, this would’ve
been different, and the inferior songs of yore would’ve been pulverized by Loveless and left with few redeeming
qualities about them. As it stands, however, they’re just too different from
the band’s later sound to be neglected. And though they aren’t on the same
level individually as Loveless, I
think they can, as a whole, still stand next to it as a true accomplishment
from a truly great band.
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