Echoes and dust

June 13 2008 @ ICA, London.

Thanks to guest reviewer Jonny Scurfield for this piece:

To say I felt privileged to be attending My Bloody Valentines’ first show in 16 years is the understatement of the century. To see such a gig at Wembley Stadium would have been a treat, but to see it at the ICA, which must only hold a couple of hundred people, gave me a distinct feeling that I’d helped a lot of old ladies cross the road in a past life, whilst simultaneously converting them to the path of righteousness. Maybe it was a big trick. Maybe my tickets wouldn’t be valid. Maybe the first chord would pop both my eardrums. Maybe the lighting rig would fall and crush the small crowd in their smugness at having secured these hottest of hot tickets. Maybe they’d just be really, really shit and it’d be the biggest letdown in history. Or maybe this was going to be one of those gigs you tell the grandkids about…

After enough Guinness to make me forget all about my busy week at work, the doors to the performance space finally opened about 9. Part of me thought it would be sacrilege to wear ear plugs to such a momentous gig, but I’d heard stories about the deafening volume at the band’s earlier gigs and decided to pick some up from the box on the way in. Surveying the stage, I noticed there were more amps up there than at your average show. Quite a lot more. Just what kind of assault were we in for? The banter in the crowd was all excitement; you could practically smell it (which is a refreshing change from the usual gig smell of sweaty dreadlock and stale beer). And then the band walked onstage. I heard a few people mumbling amongst the cheering about how they all looked EXACTLY the same as they did in ’92. “Thanks for coming to our rehearsal”, said Kevin Shields. “The first gig’s at the Roundhouse.” Nice way to let the band off the hook if they fuck up, I thought…and then they launched into ‘Only Shallow’. God it was really fucking loud, and really, really great. Imagine listening to ‘Loveless’ on a stereo with no volume limit, but better. Bilinda’s vocal was perfectly mixed (ie below the racket coming from Kevin’s side of the stage, but still audibly dreamy). It was perfect. Wicked, we’re in for a good night, I thought.

And it just got better and better as they ploughed through favourite after favourite of mine (and I’m sure everyone else’s). I had no idea Colm would be bashing the drums so hard. ‘I Only Said’ was a particular highlight. I think I started to melt into the sound a bit more about halfway through it. That wobbly guitar thing Kevin does on his Jaguar just resonates so much more live. I’ve since read on a forum that he was using the J Mascis signiture model. Right I’m getting one of them and never looking up from my feet ever again. Oh and I need a stripey, baggy jumper too. ‘Thorn’was really strong as well, and I’m sure it pleased people hoping to hear some of the slightly lesser-known stuff. I can’t believe they played that. It got a bit too much for me so I went to buy another pint and bumped into an old work colleague. On trying to speak to each other, we both realised we were shouting and still couldn’t hear each other. Oh dear, I wasn’t wearing the earplugs. Back inside, during ‘Nothing Much to Lose’ I realized I’d been totally missing one aspect of their sound. ‘Isn’t Anything’ really fits in with Dinosaur Jr or Sonic Youth’s output from the same period, and isn’t shoegazey at all in my opinion. ‘To Here Knows When’ worked really well, and gave Bilinda a chance to show everyone how great her voice (still) is. They were all great. The band, the songs, the crowd, the atmosphere. Everything.

They launched into ‘You Made Me Realize’and I remember thinking there must be about half an hour left. Back in the 90s they’d been famous for extending this song by slapping a hefty slab of white noise in the middle and taking the front row’s faces off by turning the monitors round. Apparently some people were sick and would really freak out. Sometimes they’d just play noise for 40 minutes. Anyway, I’d forgotten all about this and as the soaring noise grew and grew I began to lose track of time and succumb to confusion. It was a bit like sensory deprivation. Weird. I guess it must have been about 20 minutes into the noise (when I’d actually become pretty used to it amongst the people with their hands over their ears) that they fell back into the song. This totally threw me and I couldn’t really decode the noise to hear the melody any more, it just sounded like some demon gang of amplifiers savaging my ears, crunching and bending my perception. At this point I started jumping up and down and shaking my head like a twat. Wow, you really don’t need drugs to feel like this, I thought. And then it was all over. So I took some pictures of guitar pedals. Well you’ve got to, haven’t you?

Worth the wait? What do you think?