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.