My Bloody Valentine returns with a roar
Kevin Bronson on
4
Are sound waves matter? This question of physical science I pondered Wednesday night at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium as my body convulsed and my clothes shook during the 75-minute assault by resurrected shoegazers My Bloody Valentine. For 60 bucks, you got free earplugs, an aural lobectomy and the pleasure of bathing in warm, soapy late-’80s/early-’90s nostalgia.
And make no mistake, MBV’s trumpeted reunion gigs are every bit the Wayback Machine ride as other veteran acts still selling tickets. But in the decade and a half reclusive frontman Kevin Shields kept his quartet on the sidelines, the band’s legend grew and grew and grew. MBV’s 1991 album “Loveless” must be platinum, if you count every kid with an effects-pedal set-up who cites the band as an influence on MySpace. And if the Valentines made waves in this echo-chamber of an auditorium on a night they offered no new material, it was sound of them treading water.
But, yes, it was a glorious sound, right down to the 16-minute “big finish” to “You Made Me Realise.” Once your safety-device-appended ears adjusted to the volume 
of distortion and reverberation and you started giving in to the mesmerizing light show, you started to pick things out of the miasma — a chord progression here, a note there, or singer Bilinda Butcher’s lilt barely emerging from atop Debbie George’s basslines and Colm O’Ciosoig’s thunderous drumming.
It was at once highly visceral and high-concept, the stuff sound theorists write dissertations about.
A friend said this as we walked into the mercifully cool Santa Monica evening: “That could be the soundtrack to my life.” And it’s true — amid the cacophony of daily life, we single out the beautiful notes, or the not-so-beautiful, and these we call emotion.
||| MBV plays again tonight at the Santa Monica Civic. It’s sold out, but, on Wednesday anyway, there were plenty of face-value tickets available on the sidewalks around the venue.
||| Other observations: LA Weekly’s Play, Surfing on Steam, Amateur Chemist (with setlist), OC Register’s Soundcheck.
[…] UPDATE: Check out Bronson’s Buzz Bands review of MBV’s first night at the Santa Monica Civic he… […]
A lot of bands have hit the comeback trail. Most trying to tread the water of their past glories. This show was different. The set ended with “You Made Me Realise”. They added a 15+ minute “noise break” to the song. Incredibly, My Bloody Valentine almost achieved something mystical: The first rock’n’roll “brown note”. I have never experienced something so loud and rumbling at a gig before. People were leaving the auditorium holding their ears. I put in earplugs and rushed the stage. I’ve never felt sound like that; and I’ve been to hundreds of shows.
I’ve been a fan for years and even saw them live in the 90s. I was so disappointed by last night’s show. Maybe my expectations were too high. The sound was atrocious, the vocals were almost non-existent. The volume didn’t bother me (with earplugs) and the instrumentation was luscious, but it fell short and I left early. I was pretty bummed out. I don’t think everyone is being honest about how much they liked it. It could have been even worse and people would still talk about it like it was the second coming.
Last night’s show was the most physically challenging concert I’ve ever attended. And I think MBV wanted it that way. The gym-like acoustics at the Santa Monica Civic only made their murky sound more dense and confusing — and that might’ve been what the band wanted. The audience was mercilessly subjected to a sonic and visual assault of crunchy, soaring guitars and strobe lights that felt like needles stabbing at your eyes from the darkness. More than a few concert-goers headed for the exit early, perhaps having severely underestimated the physical toll the night would take. And I don’t think I was alone in hoping for the end of some songs to come sooner rather than later, just for a sensory breather. Long before the 20-minute ass-kicking finale, Kevin Shields made me realize that he was trying to break me. And I gleefully took every punch. I just hope I get my hearing back.