73. My Bloody Valentine, "Loveless"

 

Well, well, well, color me surprised.  Not that this album is number 73 - that's almost certainly exactly where it should be, more on that below, but that it actually was voted number 73 by the same panel of voters who put Plastic Ono Band at number 85.  See, kids?  The system works sometimes!

This brilliant tangle of an album blew my fucking mind the first time I heard it.  I wasn't sure what it was, because it sounds more like compressed and intensified raw emotion than music.  I don't even know how to describe it, other than a fever dream set to a squall of guitar and ethereal voices.  I don't think there's any question that this is one of the greatest 100 albums in rock history, and is such an incredible achievement that it's a Third Rail Album that actually deserves to be.  But if I was trying to make an objective list of the 100 greatest albums (which would look quite different from the list we're exploring), I wouldn't be upset if this ended up at 73.

The recording process for this album has entered legendary status, a genesis story that rivals the Enuma Elis or the War of the Titans or even biblical Genesis itself.  Recorded over more than two years in NINETEEN different studios, due largely to guitarist Kevin Shields' contrarianism and perfectionism, the album may have bankrupted Creation Records, or not, depending on whose account you believe. 

But what a result.  Take "When You Sleep," the first single.  It starts with a blast of guitars and the riff, and then the dreamy lyrics, which are, like most of the lyrics on this album, completely incomprehensible.  Shields said that he and co-vocalist Bilinda Butcher would spend 8 to 10 hours working on lyrics and "there's nothing worse than bad lyrics," but you can't really understand them and you're not missing much anyway:

And I'll sleep tomorrow
And it won't be long
Once in a while
Then you take me down
When you walk away

I mean, they're fine, but it's not exactly Elvis Costello-style wordsmithing.  But this album isn't about the lyrics at all.  It's about two things: the absolutely one-of-a-kind guitar sounds and the distant, disembodied vocals.  Even played at low volume, it sounds loud, and it should come at no surprise that MbV was regularly accused of playing shows that were so loud they were actually physically painful to attend.

The legacy of this album is hard to overestimate.  They essentially invented shoegaze and influenced scores of artists like Yo La Tengo and Smashing Pumpkins.  Shields basically went insane after this, trying to match the unmatchable, a virtually perfect album.  Then the band somehow reunited and released m b v in 2013 to near-universal acclaim.  Look out for the next album around 2035 I guess.

Is this album in my personal Top 500? Most assuredly, my friend.