My Bloody Valentine returns with a roar

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mbv2-100108Are 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.