Credit: Kelly O

Wow. So, yeah, My Bloody Valentine are loud. They are the
loudest band I have ever seen. Hell, they are the loudest thing I have
ever experienced, period. In the year or two since the band started
doing reunion shows, and especially in the months since they announced
their first Seattle date in 17 years—this past Monday at the WaMu
Theater—everyone has been raving about the band’s absolute,
uncontestable loudness. It’s easy to dismiss such talk as fanatic
hyperbole; everyone says his/her favorite band is the loudest, the
best, or whatever. But when it comes to My Bloody Valentine,
hyperbole pretty much fails.

I’m not sure I can adequately express the feeling of the infamous,
extended noise bridge of “You Made Me Realise,” in which guitar and
bass and drums loop and layer and multiply, bass jacked up, low drones
giving way to rhythmic pulse, drums wholly subsumed to the primordial
throb, guitars fizzing into pure radiation—but I will
try.

It felt like you were choking, like the air was too thick, too
charged, too electrically heavy to breathe. It felt like you were being
pummeled in the chest, like the air itself was giving you a deep-tissue
massage. Forget sound—speakers are really just high-powered,
low-frequency wind machines pushing air. It felt like your very atoms
were in danger of being shaken apart. It was like a jet plane taking
off in slow motion, forever. Or, as a friend texted (because speech
was impossible, even if you weren’t numbed beyond words), like staring
into the sun with your ears.

In the crowd, people raised their hands toward the sound, like they
were soaking up the waves. Some people closed their eyes. One guy held
up his hands in meditative gestures. The faces were a mix of wide
smiles and shocked awe.

And this, of course, was only 18 minutes of the last song.

Earlier in the set, the band was only regular stadium-rock-volume
loud, but the songs, even through foam earplugs, sounded just perfect,
minus a little feedback here and vocal muffle there—with Deb
Googe’s bass and Colm O’Ciosoig’s drums louder and clearer than on
record, reverse delay and other studio effects seeming to come out
of thin air as Kevin Shields and Bilinda Butcher simply strummed
their guitars or leaned gently into the mics to sing some half-heard
tone into the beautiful sonic haze.

The band started the set with the endlessly circling, off-time
guitar swoons of “I Only Said,” and they went on to play about every
classic song from the MBV canon (personal highlights included “When You
Sleep,” “Only Shallow,” and “Soon,” any of which songs’ choruses I
could stand to have looping 20 minutes to forever, at maximum volume).
In the righteous glare of these songs, songs I never thought I’d
get to hear live, I completely stopped caring, for a time, about
whether the band would ever record another song. Still, fingers
crossed, to here knows when. recommended

15 replies on “Fucking in the Streets”

  4. are you guys kidding me? neil young and zz top…i love both to death, but there is no fathomable way to say they are louder than even MBV’s half tone….

  5. I won tickets to this!! And yet, I chose to fulfill a previous commitment that I could have broken… Seriously, why???

    I now regret missing them so much.

    And about the Neil Young comment. Take it somewhere else. It has no place here. You obviously don’t understand the innovative technique of the WALL OF SOUND that MBV invented.

    Get over yourself.

  6. huh? i was just saying that neil young is LOUD. he’s actually been sued by concert goers for being so loud. on the ragged glory tour in 1991 social distortion and sonic youth opened up for neil young and crazy horse. it was during the first gulf war, and neil was going for a full on war sound. then again, i just saw him in everett last year, and he encored with a cover of “a day in the life” which ended with him ripping all the strings off his guitar and letting it feed back for a looong time. wall of sound, no?

  7. you know, i’ve seen a lot of loud. i’ve seen neil. i’ve seen the fleshtones in a small club. fugazi. wipers. earth and sunn0)))

    i’m also thinking mr. grandy has seen a few shows. i don’t think he’s trying to piss on anyone’s shoes here. i thought it was a gracious and honest depiction of volume.

    wish i had been there.

  8. Only show I’ve seen that can compete with MBV was Glenn Branca, but he had about a dozen guitarists in his orchestra. MBV have but four members.

  10. awsome concert!!! thanks for the excellent explanation of MBV LOUD SOUND. seen and heard neil young several times, and yes he is loud, however, he doesent hold a candle even close to MBV i was that guy in front of the speakers stage right who was in meditative gesture, soaking in the 18 min explosive bomb it was a spiritual experience my life forever altered YES!!!

  14. Neil Young? Fucking ZZ Top?!? You have no fucking clue!

    The trouble is that if you have never seen MBV in concert then you have no earthly idea about volume. You haven’t felt your flesh actually vibrate. Your personality hasn’t been dissolved into quavering atoms. You just don’t know.

  15. Who gives a fuck about those other bands. Getting to see MBV live is like getting invited to the most mind blowing orgy that the human race has ever seen and only being able to listen. It’s painful but still so nice.

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