Although I have been described as a "scene critic," my true passion is learning useless music history trivia and letting it live rent-free in my head for all eternity. Any chance I get to slip some deep lore and music nerd factoids about my favorite artists into this column, I pounce on it. And it usually gets through because the editor is desperate for content.
For the February issue, Valentine's Day is often on everyone's mind. Either because they're stressing about how to not fuck it up for their significant other, or they're dreading spending yet another one alone and horny. It's honestly a dumb Hallmark holiday that has all but forgotten its origins with the patron saint of epilepsy and beekeepers (look it up).
I’ve been writing for this magazine for over seven years now and pretty much ran out of romantic-related jokes concerning musicians. Despite what the abundance of love songs would have you believe, it’s a pretty unsexy profession except for the top one percent or the smart ones, who decide to DJ instead.
As I was staring at this blank page well past our writing deadline, with only the word "Valentine's Day" written at the header, all I could think about was one of my favorite bands of all time, and I figured I'd just write about them instead. Sadly, they have not dropped their long-awaited fourth album, as I demanded in my January piece last year. I was hoping that manifesting power, which did work for The Cure’s long-awaited follow-up and most of a Portishead album, would work with Kevin Shields & Co., but no dice. Maybe I should be more petulant.
But until then, I might as well waste some page space with some interesting tidbits about these shoegazing pioneers that have little to nothing to do with Valentine's Day, despite the name. For those of you stuck with going to an obscenely crowded restaurant with a three-hour wait, here are some fun facts to ruin the already sour mood of the date you didn’t even want to go on.
For those that associate the band with the vacuum cleaner guitar, whispered, buried vocals, and deep dance beats (or your poor date who couldn't care less), this group did not just emerge fully formed in 1988 as the standard against which all shoegaze is compared. It took several lineup changes and stylistic revamps to get to the classic lineup and sound that most folks associate them with. Their first EP, This is Your Bloody Valentine, from 1985, sounds like a high school band trying to sound like Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure, a few years too late. Some elements are still there, like the noisy guitar, but with the gothy croon of original singer Dave Conway, it's a whole different animal. Pretty cool unless you have no idea what the band sounds like now or care.
If your date wasn’t blown away by that fact, just wait till you wow her with this bombshell. One of the defining elements of shoegaze is the endless pedalboards and the assumption that the wall of abrasive guitar sound is achieved through basically having them all on. Not the case at all. In interviews, Kevin admits that most of the pedals he has on stage while playing live are different types of distortion. Most of that tone is just British amps cranked to oblivion, patience, and fucking with the whammy bar mid-strum (his famous glide guitar technique). On records, all that weird guitar shit isn't pedals but studio trickery. If you want to know what a hundred guitar tracks sound like, listen to Oasis's Be Here Now or Smashing Pumpkin's Siamese Dream. Kevin himself said that their 1991 album Loveless had fewer guitar tracks than most new band's demo albums. What you're hearing is strategic mic placement around the amps and manually fucking with the speed of the guitar track to create that warble effect. This might be good news for your date since it might imply you'll finally sell some of those pedals collecting dust in your closet.
Most folks (although likely not your date) are well aware that the band's highly anticipated second record, Loveless, was stuck in production hell forever. They started recording in February of 1989 and didn't wrap until September 1991—less than two months before release. Now, numbers and dates are constantly disputed, but the figure given by Creation Records is £250,000 (about half a million today), and it's confirmed they went to nineteen different studios and utilized—and paid—countless engineers. We’ll never have the real numbers since Sony bought Creation Records, and both parties argue over what the final bill really was. However, one of my favorite "excuses" for the insanely high budget for the album, which comes from Kevin himself, is that a lot of the budget was used for "living expenses" during the tortured, nearly three-year production of the record. Classic Irish. This would be an excellent time to ask your date if you can move into her place rent-free. After all, she wants to support your dream of being a successful bedroom pop star, right? Remind her that the only way you get a masterpiece like 1991's Loveless is by shelling out obscene amounts of money to some lazy musicians, who spend most of it on fast food and video games. I should give more dating advice.
