My Bloody Valentine recording new album, playing shows

By Max Orenstein
Senior Staff Writer
December 5, 2007

Since the closing fade-out of “Soon” on their 1991 record Loveless, fans and rock critics alike had long been waiting for more deep focus drone-rock from shoe-gazing pioneers My Bloody Valentine.

The wait is over (almost).

Kevin Shields, lead singer and guitarist of the seminal rock group, says that his band will release a new album before the end of the year, according to Billboard.com.

The album is three-fourths finished and draws on material that the band has been working on since 1993. Shields says that, while My Bloody Valentine’s music has progressed somewhat, the new album is “not radically different…People will go, ‘Yeah, it sounds like My Bloody Valentine.’”

My Bloody Valentine is best known for Loveless, which is considered by many to be their masterpiece and a world class body of rock music. The album was critically acclaimed and extremely influential. With its beyond-deep production and classic “shoe-gazing" style, the album has been an inspiration to the likes of Radiohead and Guided by Voices.

In the aftermath of Loveless, the band was in an ideal position to make a popular breakthrough. However, Shields went into isolation in the manner of Brian Wilson and J.D. Salinger, shying away from the world of music and releasing no material for over a decade, though he did collaborate with artists such as Dinosaur Jr. and Yo La Tengo.

Then, in an interview last February in Magnet Magazine, Shields said that My Bloody Valentine would record another album, “100 percent, unless we die or something.” It seemed that the tortured genius was on the verge of making a welcome return to the indie rock universe.

Last August, rumors flew My Bloody Valentine would headline the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 2008. Billboard.com reports that “negotiations are indeed in progress but that as of a few weeks ago, signs were pointing toward the group not playing at the event.”

On Nov. 15, My Bloody Valentine announced three reunion shows in London, Manchester and Glasgow for the summer of 2008. The shows sold out in six minutes, prompting the band to schedule an additional four shows. The band has no other plans for tours at the moment.

My Bloody Valentine’s manager, Vinita Joshi, told Billboard.com about the band's new album plans Nov. 23: “The plan is that they will release the album themselves via the Internet, but there will also probably be a vinyl release.” Joshi added that the band was not planning to offer its new album for “free” in the manner that Radiohead released In Rainbows earlier this year.

As it turns out, these statements were false and My Bloody Valentine has no plans currently for a strictly digital release. The notion that the new album will be a digital-only release is a misinterpretation.

A frustrated Vinita Joshi told the Wired Blog Network that Billboard.com misquoted him. Joshi explained, “In the interview with Billboard I stated that the forthcoming My Bloody Valentine album will more than likely be self-released. That does not equate to a digital only release, which the article states… In fact we see digital as a far inferior format and the band would never plan to release an album exclusively in a digital format. I was quite upset to be misquoted when I took the time to talk to the journalist in question.”

Wired summed up My Bloody Valentine's plans, saying that the band will self-release its new album via the Internet in CD, vinyl and digital format, despite the claims that digital formating is “inferior.”

orensteinm1@lasalle.edu