Mojo - The Music Magazine

My Bloody Valentine
Roundhouse, Camden
June 23, 2008

Everyone’s talking about “the holocaust”, except tonight there are no holocaust deniers. The holocaust is real, and it is happening to us.

Back at the turn of the ’90s, this was how My Bloody Valentine would end their sets, with 15-odd minutes of pure, ear-bleeding noise following the howitzer barrage of their debut Creation single, You Made Me Realise. The nickname seemed extremely apt. “The holocaust” was something to dread, and it seemed conceived (for whatever reason) as an ordeal. Like its genocidal namesake, the holocaust was not meant to be fun.

Tonight MBV stand before us a superficially mellowed entity. A slimline Kevin Shields sports wisps of grey. Former indie pinup Bilinda Butcher is Mary Steenburgen with a Fender Jaguar. Their audience is also older and wiser, ready to be transported by the ecstatic noise, but also steeled to endure what may be hurled at them. Stewards hand earplugs to whoever requests them (a sensible compromise, surely – let’s have louder gigs and more free earplugs).

MOJO has decided to go earplug-free – not, I promise, as proof of our manly machismo, but figuring that the unplanned harmonics and overtones that kick in at extreme volumes are the essence of Shields’s MO. Miss all that sonic providence and you may as well be listening to the records.

As opening track I Only Said kicks in, we’re congratulating ourselves on the decision. This is certainly louder than gigs generally are in these Health & Safety obsessed days, but it’s not Swans in 1985. Wallowing in the Roundhouse’s wraparound sound, the exquisite symphonies of Loveless – say, the feedbacking Philip Glass fugue of To Here Knows When – soar and shudder, while the rougher-edged squalls of Isn’t Anything vintage pay lip service to rock, albeit of a still-astoundingly original stripe. Bravely, there’s a stab at Lose My Breath, with Shields donning an acoustic guitar for Isn’t Anything’s mirage-like miniature, but it’s too fragile an item to punch its weight in this vocals-unfriendly mix.

Reunion shows can be crushing disappointments – worse than bad gigs, they’re affronts to one’s personal narrative, the little death of a former, purer self. This is the best I’ve seen, positively Arthurian in its reclamation of My Bloody Valentine’s long-somnolent legend. Deb Googe’s bass sound is literally trouser-flapping, while drummer Colm O’Ciosoig sets off Moon-esque explosions – an astonishing performance by someone whose more recent outings with Hope Sandoval and Vetiver can’t really be said to have kept his hand in, at least not at this apocalyptic level.

Even on paper, the final quarter of the set is a hair-raising proposition. Blown A Wish, the featheriest track on Loveless, is the lull before the storm. Then it’s Soon, its crushing shuffle beat beating waves of Shields’ “glide guitar” wooms and shimmers into the audience, but this is picayune next to what follows. Feed Me With Your Kiss, with its hardcore, headbanging riff, is quickly followed by the punk assault-fun of Sueisfine and the über-controntation of You Made Me Realise. Around the Roundhouse, all is delirium, as the first molten rumbles of “the holocaust” begin.

At first, it’s just very exciting, the bass and guitars rippling through the audience like footage of a nuclear blast (film here, from Friday, June 20). But after a while, the throat begins to tighten and the teeth literally start to rattle, while the pulses vibrating your ribcage appear to be probing for the resonant frequency of your beating heart. It’s at this point that it starts striking you as somewhat less than agreeable, with tides of panic swelling and giving way to concerted attempts to chill the fuck out.

At one point I imagine I’m feeling prickles, as if sleet is piercing my face. This is shortly before it occurs that this has been going on 20 minutes without the promised aural breakthrough – where the doors of sonic perception open and something dazzling, rather than merely punishing occurs – and I really, really need a wee.

Whereupon the spell is broken, and I think that maybe, just maybe, I don’t really need to endure a minute more.

In the bar outside the auditorium, fellow evacuees yell deafly at each other while inside the pummelling continues for at least another ten minutes. It’s an opportunity to review what we have just experienced: namely, a phenomenal show by a unique band climaxed by something unprecedented in the annals of musical performance. But what, exactly, is the point of it? Are Shields and co. exorcising some deep-rooted resentment or are they saying – like Lou Reed when he made Metal Machine Music – ‘Ha ha, you sheep will stand for anything! You deserve to get tinnitus!’

I suppose what I hope they’re saying is that sound is too mystical and wondrous to be taken for granted, to be something burbling in the background while cornflakes scrunch or street hubbub burbles. And that it takes an unignorable gesture to remind us of that. But whatever they’re saying, for whatever reason, they’re saying it bloody loud.

As the man said: Come on, feel the noise.

Danny Eccleston

THE SETLIST

I Only Said
When You Sleep
(When You Wake) You’re Still In A Dream
You Never Should
Lose My Breath
Come In Alone
Only Shallow
Thorn
Nothing Much To Lose
To Here Knows When
Slow
Blown A Wish
Soon
Feed Me With Your Kiss
Sueisfine
You Made Me Realise