The Hard-Boiled Wonderland

MBV effectively drew a line under the ’shoegaze’ scene with their album Loveless but its predecessor Isn’t Anything is a timely reminder of how they themselves helped define the genre in the first place. It may lack the polish and perfectionism of what followed yet in some aspects it actually meets the greatest heights that Kevin Shields and co attained. One point on which this album scores higher than Loveless is how each song, whether the listener finds it to be a highlight or not, is a separate part of the whole rather than a succession of pieces that blur into one; that is to say, it is an album that contains memorable songs that stand out as individual pieces.

There are many highlights to Isn’t Anything, most notably Belinda Butcher’s distinctive approach to lyrical performance. Lose My Breath ably demonstrates not only the album’s variety in tone and feel but ably sums up the alternative definition of the band’s music as ‘dreampop’: her soothing, sensual vocals are backed up by shimmering acoustic guitar with little else in the way of accompaniment; the nebulous Several Girls Galore teeters on the edge of slipping out of time yet manages to hold itself together.

The record takes a while to get off the ground though, with a shaky start in the form of Soft as Snow (but Warm Inside): O’Ciosoig’s crisp drumming and Googe’s insistent, almost funky, bassline drive the song along but Shields’ vocals sound amateurish and lacking in confidence. Even his trademark swirling ‘liquid’ guitar sound takes second place here; it feels like an embryonic sound that has yet to fully take shape. This album seems to have enjoyed a more democratic inception in terms of input from all the band’s members than its successor did; nevertheless Shields was probably the dominant creative force on the album as a whole. His own vocal performance on All I Need is possibly the best of his career and offered a glimpse into what his guitar work would become later on: wails and distorted rushes of noise fade in and out like waves crashing on a shoreline, drawing attention to his penchant for making the guitars hardly sound like guitars at all.

Cupid Come is another weaker effort that brings the sound closer to its full potential but falls somewhat short; after two slowish songs (When You Wake) You’re Still in a Dream ups the tempo quite noticeably, leaning towards lo-fi noise rock approach which is later reiterated with the short and delightfully chaotic Feed Me With Your Kiss. Furthermore it ventures into darker and more emotional lyrical territory - firstly with the tender yet ominous No More Sorry, in which Butcher’s calm recitations are in contrast to the painful subject matter and distant-sounding but shrieking guitar chords; and secondly with Sueisfine, in which repeats of the refrain of the title slowly and almost inperceptably transform into the word ’suicide’.

You Never Should is another fairly fast-paced effort by MBV’s standards but the listener is eased into a calmer and more introspective frame of mind through Nothing Much to Lose and the closing track I Can See It (But I Can’t Feel It) which, perhaps surprisingly, backs off on the overdrive and lets the natural sparkle of the guitar chords ring out loud and clear. For a band who made their name through otherwordly distorted sounds delivered an eardrum-shredding level, the record’s parting shot is one of several moments that remind us how the band’s back catalogue is diverse as well as genre-defining.

Tracklisting

1. Soft As Snow (but Warm Inside)
2. Lose My Breath
3. Cupid Come
4. (When You Wake) You’re Still in a Dream
5. No More Sorry
6. All I Need
7. Feed Me with your Kiss
8. Sueisfine
9. Several Girls Galore
10. You Never Should
11. Nothing Much to Lose
12. I Can See It (but I Can’t Feel It)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 10:44 am and is filed under Music Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.