A Tour of the Solar Flares
posted by Mike O'Shea
It’s 2507. You’re sailing in a tour ship thousands of miles above the surface of the Sun. From the air-conditioned quiet of its observation deck, you look down through huge, shielded windows into the sea of fire, watching enormous prominences sprout into the blackness like trees of flame.
That, anyway, is the picture I always see when I listen to “To Here Knows When,” the fourth track on My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless (1991). The keyboards and drums percolate and chatter high, distant, gliding by calmly as the solar feedback roils and combusts in the foreground, vast and wild.
Loveless is the contemporary sublime. It taught the ’90s how to sound. I’m not much given to psychedelic experiences, but this LP, played loud in a darkening room, is one. Or you can put it on in the background in your office on a Wednesday evening, as you work on an article. That works too.
June 20, 2007 at 7:17 pm
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Responses (6)
David - June 20, 2007 at 9:38 pm
I entirely support any paean to Loveless - really, one of my favorite albums ever. But dude, you see the sun? I see motionless Brits whaling away on their instruments and gazing at their shoes. Or, you know, a valentine dripping with blood.
Mike O'Shea - June 20, 2007 at 11:16 pm
You gotta take it track by track. Track 4? Yeah, definitely. Flame, huge spaces, light and darkness, heliophily. Try it turned up loud. That feedback is as impersonally menacing and lovely as a fire.
I think it’s what critic Robert Christgau had in mind when he concluded his review of Loveless with: “In the destructive elements immerse.”
MBV seems to bring out the overwritten rock crit in all of us. This guy wrote his master’s thesis on Loveless, a move I fully endorse:
http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-04102006-103749/unrestricted/fullthesis-1.pdf
Paul Gowder - June 22, 2007 at 2:29 am
“It taught the ’90s how to sound.”
That, I’m afraid, is not a compliment. Music died in the 90’s. It only recently started sputtering back to the surface.
your mom - February 14, 2008 at 5:49 pm
this is so gay and i hate it and you are retarded because you are a gay person
your mom - February 14, 2008 at 5:49 pm
this is so gay and i hate it and you are retarded because you are a gay person
Tyrone.S - April 18, 2009 at 10:46 pm
What does the sun have to do with Valentines day!?Your just confusing me.
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