my bloody valentine - isn't anything

With the release of Loveless in 1991, the fate of Isn't Anything as the second-best MBV album was seemingly sealed. On the surface, Loveless is clearly the superior album--the lush drone effects and otherworldly guitar sounds that drench the album make it unlike any record before or after it, and combined with the myths of year-long studio sessions that bankrupted their record company to back it up, it has gone down in the indie history books as a masterpiece. As it should have. It's a brilliant album.

In recent years, as a result of the subcultural phenomenon known as hipster irony, it's become commonplace to rate Isn't Anything above Loveless, simply because it's the uncool thing to do, which makes it really cool. In reality, however, Isn't Anything really is the better album. (I am slowly coming around to the fact that I'm a massive hipster, so you can take that claim with an admittedly deserved massive grain of salt.)

Both albums are the crowning achievements of the shoegaze genre, which they all but created. Both albums took feedback and combined it with standard pop songwriting in a way it had never been done before. Both albums are absolutely required listening, regardless of the reigning opinions of either.

Isn't Anything simply has something Loveless lacks: SONGS. Somewhere along the tedious, chaotic production line of Loveless, the songs themselves became lost in tides of feedback and fuzz and the tangled webs of pedals and knobs that create the racket that engulfs the entire record. The songs became tracks, objects to be worked on and layered and fine-tuned to death. And it's pretty and it's impressive and frankly I love listening to it, but Isn't Anything achieves a similar effect which much, much much less effort.

Where Loveless is fuzz, Isn't Anything is noise, plain and simple. The ratcheted off-tune guitar playing and sweeping guitar textures compliment the songs, not bury them. The vocals aren't buried under mountains of ethereal fuzz, the structures aren't reduced mere vehicles for the sonic onslaught, and by god, there's NOISE. There's a girl singing and the guitar is creating a wonderful dissonant moan and it sounds like SHIT. Glorious, glorious, SHIT.

That's what feedback was meant to be, wasn't it? Just a means of pissing off the folks and filtering out the people who just didn't get it. Then Loveless came around, and suddenly that same deafening, soul-destroying, virginity-stealing squall became pretty. PRETTY. PLEASANT even. Well fuck that. Isn't Anything takes the same radical concept of Loveless, making pop songs based on feedback, and keeps true to its roots. "Lose My Breath" is a gorgeous song, absolutely breathtaking, but at it's core, it sounds like shit. That right there is Kevin Shields' vision, not that other shit.

I know what you're thinking: Loveless sounds like shit too, asshole, so shut your hipster mouth. Well you little prick, it's not the same and you know it. It's overblown, it's overdone, it's GOOD, and I can't fucking stand it. It's a betrayal of everything I know to be true in music. It can't hurt and feel good at the same time--it's supposed to feel good BECAUSE it hurts. The first ten seconds of "I Can See It (But I Can't Feel It)" will empty a room full of normal people listening to normal music, because the guitars are out of whack and it just doesn't sound good, which is the POINT. The chorus kicks in and sounds phenomenal and almost ruins it for me, almost, but there's still that whiny feedback in the back shooting off sparks and burning anyone with normal ears who still dares to come close. IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE BAD, DAMN IT. STOP RUINING IT FOR THE REST OF US BY MAKING IT GOOD.

m ward - post-war

This is my first real encounter with M Ward, excepting a few stray shuffle encounters and his stint with the overhyped folk duo She & Him, who I had the pleasure of seeing live. (They immediately preceded Lil Wayne, and were practically booed offstage when they announced their last song.) This album is chock-full of proto-typical sunny California indie-pop, brought to life by M Ward's aching, bluesy voice eking out tales of longing that seem to float effortlessly out of him. The album flow just as easily, each song tied together by Ward's brilliantly layered acoustic workings as subtle percussion and vocal effects seep through the background. The result is music that is remarkably easy to listen to, yet never seems to sink into the banal regions of Jack Johnson-type bland beachy shit.

Ward's songwriting abilities cannot be understated. The album moves swiftly between styles, from the traditional folky lows of "Eyes on the Prize," to the instantly catchy pop tune "Magic Trick" (made famous by She & Him several years later), directly to the upbeat instrumental track "Neptune's Net," each song hitting it's intended emotional note and fading instantly to the next. Yet for all the variation he achieves on a track-to-track basis, Post-War as a whole is as fluid an album as you'll ever find, a well-rounded, well-crafted statement without a single wasted moment. It's a simple concept album: the War in question is a relationship, and this is his struggle at the end of it--as far as I can tell. In any case, it's a unified piece of indie deliciousness, music made for a lazy Summer afternoon, giving you just enough to make you think and feel but not enough to take you down off that cerebral 78-and-sunny high.

Or shit, you can strap this puppy in for a Summer thunderstorm at sundown, hang on to every tortured word that comes out of M Ward's mouth, think about lovers past and nonexistent, and cry your eyes out as the warm, indifferent rain falls around you. It'll work both ways.