Admittedly, before heading all the way to San Francisco, I was a bit worried that My Bloody Valentine wasn't going to breach my expectations. Most of the shows in the UK were getting decent reviews but there was one bad review of an NYC show that had me worried. Well, dear readers, I can truly say that this was the transcendental experience I was hoping for. Yes, the show was incredibly loud but, more than that, it was incredibly powerful. The music hit my body like the force of a small hurricane. At times, particularly during the fifteen plus minutes of You Made Me Realise, the crowd were putting their hands in the air as if to grab a hold of the sound (sort of like the way you put your hand out of a car window as it drives).All the best tracks off of Loveless, Isn't Anything and You Made Me Realise (setlist here) were taken to their absolute pinnacle of their sound. With a $350,000 sound system that they take on tour with them, Kevin Sheilds and co. were not fucking around. After almost twenty years of shying away from the public, the band have found a way to convey their sound properly in a live format. Sheilds has obviously had a vision for how the live show should sound and it appears as if he has nailed it.
I have a full review coming up in the next issue of Discorder. Watch for it.
Thanks for the pics, Amir!
1 comment:
First of all: Yay!
Second of all: Judging by the reviews, most of the shows have been great but a few have been a little underwhelming (the first Roundhouse show may have been a bit of a bust).
Anyway, both the shows I saw were incredible and I'm glad you got a good one two.
I suspect that most of the negative reviews come from smart-ass narcissists, hoping to make themselves seem smart by debunking the "myth" of MBV.
The problem for these asses is that they're basing their actions on the assumption that 15 years of silence has deepened the MBV enigma. In fact, the opposite is true: readers of Q magazine and other assorted rock bozos have had a decade-and-a-half to explain away the magic of Loveless with reference to drugs, madness, studio "trickery" etc.
But seeing the band live absolutely bulldozes these attempts at demystification. How the hell do they make that sound?
The enigma deepens.
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