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Music : Isn't Anything
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Rating: 
- Indie Rock Milestone
My Bloody Valentine's first full length album Isn't Anything was one of the most influential albums of the 1980s. It remains the best showcase of Kevin Shields guitar sound. This sound was achieved by means of continuous manipulation of the whammy bar on Shields' Fender Jazzmaster, combined with unusual guitar tunings (à la Sonic Youth) and a delay based effect known as reverse reverb. Such attention to detail was what created such a unique and often imitated guitar sound. On the other side of the coin, the production on Isn't Anything is very poor. The drums, in particular, sound very muffled and dull, definitely lacking in high frequencies. In fact the album in general suffers from a lack of clarity in the production.
Anyone who is curious to hear this album because they were impressed with Loveless, should be warned, Isn't Anything is much closer to conventional indie rock than Loveless. This is not to say that Isn't Anything is conventional however, songs like Lose My Breath and All I Need are genuinely transcendant. On the other hand there are other songs like You Never Should and Nothing Much To Lose that lean a little too much towards jaunty indie rock for my tastes. One final qualm I've have is that the tempos are a little sluggish on this album. Listening to the band's Peel Session or live bootlegs from that era, it is clear that most of these songs were usually much more energetic.
On the whole I think that Isn't Anything is a fine album, with some truly great songs and very original sounds. The influence of the Jesus and Mary Chain and Sonic Youth are much more obvious here than on later material, but My Bloody Valentine were a singular, unique even here. Isn't Anything's has been a very influential album; was the starting point for the shoegaze genre inspiring the likes of Slowdive, Ride, the Boo Radleys, Lilys, Yo La Tengo, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and many more. I would also recommend that anyone who likes this album should seek out the preceding EPs You Made Me Realise and Feed Me With Your Kiss.
Rating:
- Their Finest Hour
Although the apotheosis of My Bloody Valentine was complete after the release of `Loveless', and the sheer number of reviews that album has attracted compared to this seems to confirm its status as the band's most-celebrated release, I will risk going against the prevailing orthodoxy by stating that `Isn't Anything' has stood the test of time better.
`Isn't Anything' retains a sharpness and clarity of songwriting which is sometimes a little absent in `Loveless's' walls of guitar effects. `Feed Me With Your Kiss' pounds with brutal riffs and rhythm and `No More Sorry' is a genuinely disturbing lyric about child abuse. Changes in tempo and rhythm are used to great effect on `Soft as Snow (But Warm Inside).
Of course, the album is laden with great guitar work, heavily treated in parts such as tracks like `Several Girls Galore' but on `Isn't Anything' the effect is to complement the songs rather than being the main point of the exercise.
Don't get me wrong, I really like `Loveless' but still sounding fresh, original and exciting 20 years after being recorded, this is the band's finest moment. Classic British indie music.
Rating: - 1988's debut album proper...
Following the great single You Made Me Realise, My Bloody Valentine were a new band- nothing to do with the poor-Primitives/Shop Assistants-type band of Strawberry Wine. The late 1980s were becoming exciting in a guitar sense- Spacemen 3, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth ,Husker Du, AR Kane & even Nirvana all heralded an approach to rock music that was a few steps on from the Velvets: though feedback was the key. Though listening to Isn't Anything now, it seems to have plenty in common with the euphoric feeling around the 'second summer of love', it has the same otherworldly, narcotic quality akin to chemical experimentation. Thus you get something like the 'off'-sounding guitars of single Feed Me With Your Kiss...
...I don't know about 'lush soundscapes', but the combination of droning guitars, off-kilter riffs, lyrics that could be about dreams or sex (or both...) & the contrasting vocals of Butcher & Shields, it feels like a lush soundscape to me. Of course, there's a roughness there also, some of the guitars and rhythms are positively violent- notably Nothing Much to Lose, with that wild-pre-drum'n'bass opening of O'Ciosoig & Shields. The album seems one of contrasts, you have the lush soundscapes set against the hail of feedback. You have Shield's blank sounding vocals against Butcher's ethereal charms- the two trading off each other on Nothing Much..., one of my favourite tracks here. In it's own way, it's perfect pop...
Would anyone really call All I Need a lush soundscape?- it sounds both blissful and disturbing, positively sybaritic- reminding me of the various times I've been lost in myself, whether in dreams, or in those doors of perception. All I Need is a cacophony of feedback, like the later Loomer, it veers close to not being music; it IS metal machine music, a hail of feedback and towards the end, beats that sound like a racing heartbeat...
Shields & co were forward thinking musicians, sadly this cd doesn't come with the extra instrumentals that the vinyl version did- one that sampled Public Enemy before Madonna did (see Justify My Love) and showcased MBV's dance-side, elements of dub and hip-hop filtering into their music (hey, I always found a similarity between Cocteau Twins & Eric B and Rakim!). Opener Soft as Snow (But Warm Inside)initially reminds me of The Clash's Magnificent Dance/Seven, till a guitar drone backs Shield's vocals, then a dubby bass kicks in over the robotic beat & Butcher's 'harmonies' compound the effect...Not much sounds like this, it's almost pathetic to put such sounds into words- reminding me of such albums as Rock Bottom, Blue Bell Knoll, I, Star Sailor & Sulk: to misquote Roky Erickson, "it lives in a time of its own"...This is after Lou, after Branca...the next step on-
Lose My Breath is utterly ravishing, sure it could be classified as 'joss-sticks'n'shagging music' like Cocteau Twins, but it's the closest I can think of those feelings called love. Of those lucid dreams where everything is beautiful. Orgasmic stuff, almost minimal, the music seems to drip off and around Butcher's vocals. Cupid Come offers more alien pop, drones merging into a song that I guarantee would be an international number one if Britney or whoever covered it- it sounds like music as we know it, but it's approach is otherworldly and unexpected. Into alien climes...it has the same feel, one that might initially put listeners off, of not being quite there. You can grip onto parts and not get others- but I like that feeling of uncertainty and the foreign. Where are we???????- it shares a feeling (though not a sound) with albums like Trout Mask Replica & New Picnic Time- one that stretches ideas of what rock&roll can be...
Tracks like (When You Wake) You're Still in a Dream & Sueisfine are much faster, having more in common with year zero You Made Me Realise. No More Sorry reminds me of things from the past (Glenn Branca, Metal Machine Music, Pere Ubu's A Sentimental Journey) & things that would follow it (From Here to Infinity, GSYBE!, Young Team, MBV's own Glider). It sounds like a feedback-driven precursor of Jeff Buckley's Corpus Christi Carol, the guitars almost classical (in an avant garde sense, of course)- this is way more than mere drone and walls of noise. You feel like you're being sucked into another world...
Several Girls Galore and You Never Should continue to expand the sound, leading to the violently sexy Nothing Much to Lose...the album concluding on a mid-paced song I Can See It (But I Can't Feel It)- which feels like a good point to end on. MBV would advance further, first with Glider (1990) and then with Tremelo & Loveless (both 1991)- the latter even more perfect than this and off the scale really. Shield's is apparently up to work on an MBV compilation, with the promise of unreleased material to surface on it- & is almost back in vogue due to his work with Primal Scream & the Lost in Translation soundtrack. This is a great, great album- one that has dated perfectly- though it doesn't tell the whole story, as tracks like You Made Me Realise, Slow, Cigarette in Your Bed, Off Your Face, Glider, Honey Power, Loomer, Soon & Only Shallow aren't here. & I wonder also if a live album could ever surface, as there are still people like me who talk in reverential tones about THAT epic version of You Made Me Realise played on the Loveless and Rollercoaster tours...A brilliant record- someone give these guys the box-set treatment!
Rating: - interesting
this album took me three listens until i understood it properly, but now that i do, i absolubtely love it. kevin shields is obviously addicted to his digitech whammy pedal, as it is on every track. a really great individual sound, and you can hear how they have influenced so many artists *my vitriol want to be this band*.
on the wall of sound guitars issue, there isn't a wall of sound guitars, but imagine sonic youth a little less grungey and a little more arty and you're there. a very very good album by a very very good band
[::charlie::]
Rating: - In the shadows there is a classic
It seems this album has been completely overshadowed by the seminal Loveless but it is a shame as this is a real classic album. It is probably more generally accessible than Loveless but this doesn't mean it is of less worth. The sensual combination of the male and female voices off of each other and swooping guitar washes was totally new and still sounds fresh and startling. Melodically Soft as Snow but Warm Inside and No More Sorry are in a place somewhere between John Barry and Lee Hazlewood. A trully beautiful album with an edge.
- Indie Rock MilestoneMy Bloody Valentine's first full length album Isn't Anything was one of the most influential albums of the 1980s. It remains the best showcase of Kevin Shields guitar sound. This sound was achieved by means of continuous manipulation of the whammy bar on Shields' Fender Jazzmaster, combined with unusual guitar tunings (à la Sonic Youth) and a delay based effect known as reverse reverb. Such attention to detail was what created such a unique and often imitated guitar sound. On the other side of the coin, the production on Isn't Anything is very poor. The drums, in particular, sound very muffled and dull, definitely lacking in high frequencies. In fact the album in general suffers from a lack of clarity in the production.
Anyone who is curious to hear this album because they were impressed with Loveless, should be warned, Isn't Anything is much closer to conventional indie rock than Loveless. This is not to say that Isn't Anything is conventional however, songs like Lose My Breath and All I Need are genuinely transcendant. On the other hand there are other songs like You Never Should and Nothing Much To Lose that lean a little too much towards jaunty indie rock for my tastes. One final qualm I've have is that the tempos are a little sluggish on this album. Listening to the band's Peel Session or live bootlegs from that era, it is clear that most of these songs were usually much more energetic.
On the whole I think that Isn't Anything is a fine album, with some truly great songs and very original sounds. The influence of the Jesus and Mary Chain and Sonic Youth are much more obvious here than on later material, but My Bloody Valentine were a singular, unique even here. Isn't Anything's has been a very influential album; was the starting point for the shoegaze genre inspiring the likes of Slowdive, Ride, the Boo Radleys, Lilys, Yo La Tengo, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and many more. I would also recommend that anyone who likes this album should seek out the preceding EPs You Made Me Realise and Feed Me With Your Kiss.
Rating:
- Their Finest HourAlthough the apotheosis of My Bloody Valentine was complete after the release of `Loveless', and the sheer number of reviews that album has attracted compared to this seems to confirm its status as the band's most-celebrated release, I will risk going against the prevailing orthodoxy by stating that `Isn't Anything' has stood the test of time better.
`Isn't Anything' retains a sharpness and clarity of songwriting which is sometimes a little absent in `Loveless's' walls of guitar effects. `Feed Me With Your Kiss' pounds with brutal riffs and rhythm and `No More Sorry' is a genuinely disturbing lyric about child abuse. Changes in tempo and rhythm are used to great effect on `Soft as Snow (But Warm Inside).
Of course, the album is laden with great guitar work, heavily treated in parts such as tracks like `Several Girls Galore' but on `Isn't Anything' the effect is to complement the songs rather than being the main point of the exercise.
Don't get me wrong, I really like `Loveless' but still sounding fresh, original and exciting 20 years after being recorded, this is the band's finest moment. Classic British indie music.
Rating:
- 1988's debut album proper...Following the great single You Made Me Realise, My Bloody Valentine were a new band- nothing to do with the poor-Primitives/Shop Assistants-type band of Strawberry Wine. The late 1980s were becoming exciting in a guitar sense- Spacemen 3, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth ,Husker Du, AR Kane & even Nirvana all heralded an approach to rock music that was a few steps on from the Velvets: though feedback was the key. Though listening to Isn't Anything now, it seems to have plenty in common with the euphoric feeling around the 'second summer of love', it has the same otherworldly, narcotic quality akin to chemical experimentation. Thus you get something like the 'off'-sounding guitars of single Feed Me With Your Kiss...
...I don't know about 'lush soundscapes', but the combination of droning guitars, off-kilter riffs, lyrics that could be about dreams or sex (or both...) & the contrasting vocals of Butcher & Shields, it feels like a lush soundscape to me. Of course, there's a roughness there also, some of the guitars and rhythms are positively violent- notably Nothing Much to Lose, with that wild-pre-drum'n'bass opening of O'Ciosoig & Shields. The album seems one of contrasts, you have the lush soundscapes set against the hail of feedback. You have Shield's blank sounding vocals against Butcher's ethereal charms- the two trading off each other on Nothing Much..., one of my favourite tracks here. In it's own way, it's perfect pop...
Would anyone really call All I Need a lush soundscape?- it sounds both blissful and disturbing, positively sybaritic- reminding me of the various times I've been lost in myself, whether in dreams, or in those doors of perception. All I Need is a cacophony of feedback, like the later Loomer, it veers close to not being music; it IS metal machine music, a hail of feedback and towards the end, beats that sound like a racing heartbeat...
Shields & co were forward thinking musicians, sadly this cd doesn't come with the extra instrumentals that the vinyl version did- one that sampled Public Enemy before Madonna did (see Justify My Love) and showcased MBV's dance-side, elements of dub and hip-hop filtering into their music (hey, I always found a similarity between Cocteau Twins & Eric B and Rakim!). Opener Soft as Snow (But Warm Inside)initially reminds me of The Clash's Magnificent Dance/Seven, till a guitar drone backs Shield's vocals, then a dubby bass kicks in over the robotic beat & Butcher's 'harmonies' compound the effect...Not much sounds like this, it's almost pathetic to put such sounds into words- reminding me of such albums as Rock Bottom, Blue Bell Knoll, I, Star Sailor & Sulk: to misquote Roky Erickson, "it lives in a time of its own"...This is after Lou, after Branca...the next step on-
Lose My Breath is utterly ravishing, sure it could be classified as 'joss-sticks'n'shagging music' like Cocteau Twins, but it's the closest I can think of those feelings called love. Of those lucid dreams where everything is beautiful. Orgasmic stuff, almost minimal, the music seems to drip off and around Butcher's vocals. Cupid Come offers more alien pop, drones merging into a song that I guarantee would be an international number one if Britney or whoever covered it- it sounds like music as we know it, but it's approach is otherworldly and unexpected. Into alien climes...it has the same feel, one that might initially put listeners off, of not being quite there. You can grip onto parts and not get others- but I like that feeling of uncertainty and the foreign. Where are we???????- it shares a feeling (though not a sound) with albums like Trout Mask Replica & New Picnic Time- one that stretches ideas of what rock&roll can be...
Tracks like (When You Wake) You're Still in a Dream & Sueisfine are much faster, having more in common with year zero You Made Me Realise. No More Sorry reminds me of things from the past (Glenn Branca, Metal Machine Music, Pere Ubu's A Sentimental Journey) & things that would follow it (From Here to Infinity, GSYBE!, Young Team, MBV's own Glider). It sounds like a feedback-driven precursor of Jeff Buckley's Corpus Christi Carol, the guitars almost classical (in an avant garde sense, of course)- this is way more than mere drone and walls of noise. You feel like you're being sucked into another world...
Several Girls Galore and You Never Should continue to expand the sound, leading to the violently sexy Nothing Much to Lose...the album concluding on a mid-paced song I Can See It (But I Can't Feel It)- which feels like a good point to end on. MBV would advance further, first with Glider (1990) and then with Tremelo & Loveless (both 1991)- the latter even more perfect than this and off the scale really. Shield's is apparently up to work on an MBV compilation, with the promise of unreleased material to surface on it- & is almost back in vogue due to his work with Primal Scream & the Lost in Translation soundtrack. This is a great, great album- one that has dated perfectly- though it doesn't tell the whole story, as tracks like You Made Me Realise, Slow, Cigarette in Your Bed, Off Your Face, Glider, Honey Power, Loomer, Soon & Only Shallow aren't here. & I wonder also if a live album could ever surface, as there are still people like me who talk in reverential tones about THAT epic version of You Made Me Realise played on the Loveless and Rollercoaster tours...A brilliant record- someone give these guys the box-set treatment!
Rating:
- interestingthis album took me three listens until i understood it properly, but now that i do, i absolubtely love it. kevin shields is obviously addicted to his digitech whammy pedal, as it is on every track. a really great individual sound, and you can hear how they have influenced so many artists *my vitriol want to be this band*.
on the wall of sound guitars issue, there isn't a wall of sound guitars, but imagine sonic youth a little less grungey and a little more arty and you're there. a very very good album by a very very good band
[::charlie::]
Rating:
- In the shadows there is a classicIt seems this album has been completely overshadowed by the seminal Loveless but it is a shame as this is a real classic album. It is probably more generally accessible than Loveless but this doesn't mean it is of less worth. The sensual combination of the male and female voices off of each other and swooping guitar washes was totally new and still sounds fresh and startling. Melodically Soft as Snow but Warm Inside and No More Sorry are in a place somewhere between John Barry and Lee Hazlewood. A trully beautiful album with an edge.