ANDREW PERER wrote this book on Kevin Shields and MY BLOODY VALENTINE, and I'll be bloody damned — it's actually pretty good. And you're already asking yourself: "Why in the name of all that is holy would I want to read about some Irish dude getting a guitar so he can sound like a Boeing 747 sobbing into a pillow?" Ah, but calm your pint, buddy, because it appears that this isn't some hack Wikipedia cribbage scribbled between benders.
Perer's been digging on this ground for decades, searching out everyone from one-time band members to sound guys still cringing at the word "reverb." He's found the lunatics who heard Shields warping his guitar into sounds that kept grown men in their shoes for hours, so "shoegaze," but I still envision it sounding like a lads' support group for dudes with wonky ankles.
Some of them are being told here for the first time, and you get the sense that it's because no sane human being had the endurance to follow half of Shields' orbit. Let's be honest: MY BLOODY VALENTINE's career is what a band would do with time travel but only reversed to leapfrog over deadlines.
Three albums. Forty years. I have heard buskers in Camden shell out that many albums in the time it takes to miss paying rent. But the three that they did release? Each one falls like a brick through your lounge window at 3 a.m. — frightening, inconsiderate, but somehow lovely when moonlight reflects off the splinters. "Loveless" (1991), the album everyone says is God sneezing slowly, is handled with the reverence it is given.
Perer not only buffs Shields' halo, but introduces us to the fellow and his cash-burning record company like a pyromaniacal accountant, scaring Island Records and engineers who likely still drink bourbon for breakfast. The book dispels the urban myth and presents us with the chaos for what it really was: half-genius and half-sheer and complete madness. "Loveless" isn’t the only era covered. Andrew Perer also chronicles the long, strange quiet period.
The "Are they dead or abducted by aliens?" decade, when Kevin Shields supposedly was working, maybe, or maybe just hiding in a cabinet with fifty guitars and a fear of sunlight. And he charts Shields' fill-in activities: production, remixing, inserting himself into Sofia Coppola soundtracks as some sort of musical vampire. Creeping around, messing about, returning with something that makes you wonder whether the guitar is an instrument or a weapon.
What I adore is that the book does not give anyone a free ride. It's not a gushy fan epistle. There are the breakdowns, tantrums of brilliance, the utter perversity of a band that created the most ground-breaking album of the '90s and then more or less coasted for a decade like they'd simply popped out to pick up some milk.
If you care about music history, this is a no-brainer.
If you merely wish to discover how one obstinate Irish boy rewired the way we hear sound, music, and guitars which can emulate dying engines, then this book is well worth your time. But if "shoegaze" to you is all about crashing around drunk and staring at the ground, then maybe hold the colouring book.".
Good book, good author. I still don't get it, why it would take twenty years to write three records, but now that I've read this, I nearly respect the sheer obstinacy of it. But then I spent three months putting in a shelf. Shields spent twenty years learning to tune a guitar. Maybe we're not quite so different, then. Words: Matt Denny.
Perer's been digging on this ground for decades, searching out everyone from one-time band members to sound guys still cringing at the word "reverb." He's found the lunatics who heard Shields warping his guitar into sounds that kept grown men in their shoes for hours, so "shoegaze," but I still envision it sounding like a lads' support group for dudes with wonky ankles.
Some of them are being told here for the first time, and you get the sense that it's because no sane human being had the endurance to follow half of Shields' orbit. Let's be honest: MY BLOODY VALENTINE's career is what a band would do with time travel but only reversed to leapfrog over deadlines.
Three albums. Forty years. I have heard buskers in Camden shell out that many albums in the time it takes to miss paying rent. But the three that they did release? Each one falls like a brick through your lounge window at 3 a.m. — frightening, inconsiderate, but somehow lovely when moonlight reflects off the splinters. "Loveless" (1991), the album everyone says is God sneezing slowly, is handled with the reverence it is given.
Perer not only buffs Shields' halo, but introduces us to the fellow and his cash-burning record company like a pyromaniacal accountant, scaring Island Records and engineers who likely still drink bourbon for breakfast. The book dispels the urban myth and presents us with the chaos for what it really was: half-genius and half-sheer and complete madness. "Loveless" isn’t the only era covered. Andrew Perer also chronicles the long, strange quiet period.
The "Are they dead or abducted by aliens?" decade, when Kevin Shields supposedly was working, maybe, or maybe just hiding in a cabinet with fifty guitars and a fear of sunlight. And he charts Shields' fill-in activities: production, remixing, inserting himself into Sofia Coppola soundtracks as some sort of musical vampire. Creeping around, messing about, returning with something that makes you wonder whether the guitar is an instrument or a weapon.
What I adore is that the book does not give anyone a free ride. It's not a gushy fan epistle. There are the breakdowns, tantrums of brilliance, the utter perversity of a band that created the most ground-breaking album of the '90s and then more or less coasted for a decade like they'd simply popped out to pick up some milk.
If you care about music history, this is a no-brainer.
If you merely wish to discover how one obstinate Irish boy rewired the way we hear sound, music, and guitars which can emulate dying engines, then this book is well worth your time. But if "shoegaze" to you is all about crashing around drunk and staring at the ground, then maybe hold the colouring book.".
Good book, good author. I still don't get it, why it would take twenty years to write three records, but now that I've read this, I nearly respect the sheer obstinacy of it. But then I spent three months putting in a shelf. Shields spent twenty years learning to tune a guitar. Maybe we're not quite so different, then. Words: Matt Denny.
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