r/MyBloodyValentine

They are really very different and they're the only two I'm finding and I'm having trouble figuring out which of them works. Bassists? Help me out? ETA: there's a bass cover on youtube that sounds good but no tabs.

Shields commented: "Tremolo had seven tracks on it, but you're not allowed to do that, so we called it four tracks and didn't name three of them. People just thought they were weird bits!

I recently introduced a friend to My Bloody Valentine and he actually liked the vibe and the whole wall-of-sound thing, but at the same time he said something I kind of get: after a while the songs start feeling a bit tiring (because of the costant strumming and lack of structure), so they’re not really the kind of thing you’d put on all the time.

That observation kicked off a conversation that made me reflect on what actually “clicked” for me with MBV in the first place. I realized that a big part of it was when I started paying attention to the songs underneath the wall of sound and the production techniques.

To make my point clearer to him, I sent him a bunch of acoustic covers of Loveless tracks (just voice + guitar), and honestly, re-listening to those stripped-down versions again made something really obvious to me: a huge reason I’m such a fan is that Kevin Shields is genuinely a great composer at the core.

Like, I genuinely think a lot of Loveless would totally work as folk-ish songs! If you take away the distortion and the studio layering, there are still really solid chord progressions, really delicate melodies, and a lot of emotional weight just sitting there in the writing itself.

And then of course all of that gets turned into this dense, blurry, hypnotic sound mass, which is exactly what creates that trance-like feeling they’re famous for. But I can also see how that same quality can make them harder to approach for some listeners, since the “song” is partially hidden inside the texture.

Bit of a musician nerd moment here, but I particularly really love their harmony choices, especially the use of major 7 chords and sus chords.
Compared to a lot of rock music that sits more in minor/dorian territory, MBV feels way more floating harmonically, and the melodies often lean into upper extensions too, which gives everything that slightly unstable, ethereal feeling that just hangs in the air, you know?

Anyway, I guess what I ended up realizing is that for me MBV isn’t just about huge fuzzy wall-of-guitars or production wizardry. It’s that underneath all of it there are actually really beautiful, delicate songs, and the noise just changes the way you perceive them!
What do you think?

The only song off loveless that I think really has good songwriting is when you sleep tbh. Might just be because I prefer their songs that have more a more sad emotional weight, but I find the songwriting under most of the songs in mbv is more interesting, catchy, and varied than those on loveless. Not to mention the mixing just sounds better. Anyone else feel the same?