Once upon a time (aka about a month and a half ago), in the middle of a Lester Bangs headrush of ironic bullshit rock writing (RIP you goddamn genius you), I decided to rant about how Isn't Anything was better than Loveless for some goddamn bullshit hipster reason like songwriting, I don't even remember. The point is it was total bullshit.Loveless is the greatest album of all-time.
This leaves me in quite a predicament. What's more hipster, thinking Loveless is the greatest thing to ever happen to humanity, or thinking Isn't Anything is the better album just because everyone loves Loveless so fucking much? It's quite the hipster conundrum. All I know is, on about my dozenth listen to Loveless, it suddenly hit me what an unbelievably beautiful album it was, and how it was miles ahead any of the other bullshit I listened to, and how "Sometimes" was a more goddamn perfect song than I would ever find the words to describe in my entire life, and how the entire album is nothing but pedals and power chords but it's just so goddamn perfect regardless, there are just no words to describe it.
The first song to hit me was "When You Sleep." It was the "oh" part in the first verse, followed by the "once in a while," a sort of one-two punch that made me realize what a total jackass I had been for never actually listening to this album, even though I had heard it a million times.
Interesting sidenote--I'm willing to bet there are millions, MILLIONS of people just like me who have heard this song a million times and called it their hipster bible and all that bullshit but have never actually listened to the music, never actually listened beyond the initial wall of noise with the mumbled shitty mixed-down lyrics and improbable guitar effects and indifferent extra instruments. That makes me sad.
That song actually made me cry, when every other time I had heard it, it was just another sub-par filler track until "Come In Alone," which is still a fucking fantastic song but isn't even close to being the best song on Loveless, let alone one of my favorite songs of all-time.
What lead me to the whole "favorite album of all-time" business when it used to be my second favorite My Bloody Valentine album is the fact that this is the only album I can listen to all the way through and enjoy every fucking second of it. Other albums come close--OK Computer, Songs About Fucking, In an Aeroplane Over the Sea (yes I'm fucking serious), the Downward Spiral, 69 Love Songs, Bee Thousand, etc., etc.--for all of them, no matter how amazing they are, I reach a point where I have to force myself to finish the album. With Loveless, once I start it, I finish it every fucking time.
So I don't know where I'm going with this. I suppose I'm trying to say that I'm a fucktard for saying Isn't Anything is the better album, and anybody who makes a similar claim is just as stupid as me. (Incidentally, I don't support the use of the word fucktard at any time, in any situation.) Listening to "Sometimes," it makes me think that life is worth living after all, and that I should just open up to the fucking world, letting the dissonance between chords fuel my daily existence, stirring the pots that need to be stirred, saying the things that need to be said, reaching out and telling D E R L R and C all the things I want to tell them, all the things I can't tell them as much as I want to, all the things this song tells me I just need to fucking let out.
I know this is just a bunch of rambling bullshit. But compare this to the rambling bullshit I came up with listening to Isn't Anything, and YOU tell me which is the better album.
