My Bloody Valentine, O2 Academy, Birmingham
- Written by Paul Stephen Gettings
Many, many column inches have been dedicated to just how loud My Bloody Valentine are during their live shows, but nothing actually really prepares you for it. Conversations stop mid-flow as Bilinda Butcher strikes a tentative chord before launching into opener 'When You Sleep'; even unaccompanied, the sound of her guitar is deafening. By the time bandmates Deb Googe, Colm Ó Cíosóig and Kevin Shields join her, the noise is so all-encompassing that you're left swaying, stunned and dumbstruck.
That's not to mention the notorious 'noise holocaust'. Drawing out the recorded version of 'You Made Me Realise''s brief mid-song wall of static into a twenty-minute ocean of sound, My Bloody Valentine push past the point of making a big racket and into a weirdly entrancing transcendental experience. As the sounds build up to a dense, thick cloud, it feels like the very air around you is bubbling and boiling and that your heart will shake itself to a halt. Your mind swims around in the layers of static and, just as you're getting used to it all, the song jumps back in, strangely tinny and warped after the sonic assault.
Other set highlights included the sublime 'Cigarette In Your Bed' which married the band's headcrushing distortion to delicate, ethereal strums of acoustic guitar, and 'Only Shallow', which remains My Bloody Valentine's best example of how perfectly they can fuse beautiful, melodic songwriting with startling swathes of aggressive fuzz.
Although this tour is technically riding off the back of new album mbv, the amount of songs taken from that album in the set tonight is pretty moderate. While new tracks such as 'Only Tomorrow', and 'New You' fit themselves into the set well, it feels like they only slip in as much new material as they feel comfortable with. The emphasis is still very much on tracks taken from Loveless and the You Made Me Realise EP.
After the high watermark of 'You Made Me Realise' and its noise holocaust interlude, the evening's jungle-influenced closing track 'Wonder 2' is a little grating. Its relentless, rolling beats and sickly guitar drone feel like something of an afterthought following much more appropriate set closers such as the aforementioned 'You Made Me Realise' and Loveless album closer, 'Soon'. But this minor quibble does nothing to detract from My Bloody Valentine's complete mastery of their live sound.