No Filler Music Podcast - Shoegaze Upon The Wall Of Sound: My Bloody Valentine's 'Loveless'

Episode Date: September 1, 2019

On this week's episode, we take a deep dive into shoegaze and the album that laid the foundation for the genre: My Bloody Valentine's 1991 album "Loveless". Loveless oozes a sonic balm that first embraces and then softly pulverizes the frantic stress of life;  a challenging storm of bent pitch, undulating volume and fractured tempos. This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Along with your favorite restaurant food, alcohol, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. I was never interested in particularly standard rock guitar sounds. The sound that we're going for in our head was like so loud and so everything's squashed together.

It's a bit like an infinite horizon. It just goes on and on. And unlike horizon where your eyesight stops with sound, you can imagine it infinitely. And welcome to No Filler. The music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Quentin.

Got my brother Travis with me as always. Today we are continuing to dive into Shugays. last week we just briefly touched on it with the band Slow Dive and today we're going to cover the darlings of the genre My Bloody Valentine and their 1991 album Loveless and be sure to stick around to the very end of the episode because we are bringing back our watcher herds and if that doesn't make any sense to you we'll explain it later

So Travis, when did you first hear my bloody Valentine? So here's the God to honest truth, dude. I typically have mixed my bloody Valentine and my chemical romance in my head. Oh, no. I know that those are in two different worlds, but I'm just saying like, I don't think I've ever, it's very possible

that I've never listened to my bloody Valentine or gotten into them. because to me and my brain, I'm like, oh, that's just that really bad, like, band, you know, from the 2000s or whatever. Yeah. Okay, so a question for you. So that little intro clip, that was Kevin Shields talking. He's like the brains behind my bloody Valentine. We'll get into all that in a little bit.

But the song that we introed in is track one off of Loveless is called Only Shallow. Have you ever heard that song before, dude? I have actually heard it. Okay. That doesn't mean, you know, you know, with my bloody Valentine, it's one of those things where like, surely I've pulled up loveless and pushed play. Like, I know I've done it. Because I know I've heard that song.

And if that's track one, that's probably what happened. I probably cued it up, pushed play, and who knows, got distracted and walked away or something like that because I don't think I've ever gone beyond perhaps the first track. So I'm excited to dive in. Let me say something, man. This reminds me of when we covered Animal Collective. and their album sung tongues. You said something similar with Animal Collective,

and it really bummed me out, dude. I'm all over the map, dude. When I'm listening to music at work, like, I get, I get, um, I get ADD with my music, dude. I'll bounce around all over the place. I'll, I'll get called into a meeting or something, or I'll, you know, have a conversation with a coworker.

And then I open up my computer again and pull up like, oh, you know, let me just switch to something else here real quick. And that's how I end up listening to track one. of an album and then forgetting about it and going elsewhere, you know. So I think that's the case with this because I recognize that song and I don't, I can't say that I went beyond that. Okay. Well, I'm excited to, dude, I'm excited to share it with you today, man. And let me say this. So we mentioned briefly last week and I like to use this term. So I'm sorry if you're tired of it, but I like the whole concept of, you know,

most genres of music have two sides to their corn, you know? And Shugays popped up in the early 90s, you know, super late 80s, pushing up right up into the 90s, and then it just kind of went from there. At the same time, grunge was happening. and I feel like those are two sides of a very similar coin, or maybe the same coin. And the more I dive into shoegays, quote unquote, the more I'm realizing, okay, I'm, like, this is what I'm all about, is the shoe gaze side of the coin for this style of rock and roll in the early 90s.

So why do you, so why do you say that they're two sides of that? the same coin because they were they emerged at the same time or because there's some crossover no no so um well let's just dive right into it man all right um i got i got a i got a couple just honestly random artists that i'm going to play a few tunes from i say random because there's a lot of uh different artists that you could point to to say you know okay here's where this stemmed from you know this and that um but you can really see where shoegays kind of stemmed from listening to these two artists. I'm talking about Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, I can see where you're going with this. Okay. Well, let me read a couple quotes here that I thought kind of encompassed the sound of shoegaze. So, again, if you type in shoegaze into Wikipedia, you know, or, you know, if you dive into Shugays, it's synonymous with Dreampop, which to me, it still blows my mind because, and like we mentioned last week, to us, and maybe it's just because of our age, but Dreampop to us is a very specific sound from specifically the early 2000s, right?

Well, it's not the, it's not the early 2000s. It's the 2010s. 2010s. Yeah. And I feel like that's because we had a music blog at that. time, you know, and we were just bombarded with Dreampop bands. Well, I mean, the thing is, though, it's because, like you said, it's because of our age. Like, it's not like, it's not like we, if we had known about Shugay's and Dream Pop, the origins of it, I don't think we would have confused ourselves and be like, wait a minute. Yeah. So, uh, Dream Pop combines nebulous distorted guitars with murmured vocals, sometimes completely.

smudged into a wall of noise. That's synonymous with shoegays to me. Distorted guitars, murmured vocals, and wall of noise. I love that term, wall of noise, and I think it just kind of

summarizes the sound perfectly. So, I mean, dude, when I pull up Dream Pop on Wikipedia, it says the style is often over, or it says it often overlaps with the related genre of shoe gazing. But it doesn't say,

okay. Although it does say, and the two genre terms have at times been used interchangeably. I don't know, man. I feel like shoegaze is shoegaze and Dream Pop. They're two very distinct sounds to me, but hey, you know what? I guess the point is that these two terms were coined around the same time and they were talking about the same music. That's the thing. Okay. Yeah. So we mentioned briefly last week, the term shoegaze was coined by the British music press. And they were talking specifically about how these, quote, neo-psychedelic groups, you know, during live performances, they would just, you know, kind of standstill, somewhat detached, you know, non-confrontational with their heads down. Yeah. So you're saying like basically, gone were the days of like the spandex and the long hair and the super in your face rock and roll right

right like we're talking twisted sister or van helen yeah exactly so here's something i didn't realize and this is a no-brainer now that i think about it or or you know after reading this um the reason they were staring down at their shoes was because they were using effects pedals and and tons of them to get the sound that, you know, the sound out of their guitars that, that, you know, is synonymous with with the shoegaze genre. Yeah. So I want to play, again, I want to play a couple of tracks from the, you know, a few predecessors that were mentioned in a few articles that I read.

I'm going to start with Dinosaur Jr. And this is a song from their album, You're Living All Over Me, came out in 1987. this song is called Little Furry Things. Yeah, so there's that wall of sound that you're talking about, you know? Yeah, these bands just, you know, cranked up the distortion. And if you saw them live back then, they cranked up the fucking volume, dude, to where it was just nothing but just like a wall of sound. Yeah, and it's not just distortion too. I mean, the sound is like a lot of fuzz and a lot of reverb.

I love it, dude. I love it. There's like a reverse reverb almost. Yeah, so let me read something and, you know, I'm lazy here. I'm just pulling from Wikipedia, but I thought this was a good quote for Dinosaur Jr. sound. Their use of feedback, extreme volume, and the loud, quiet dynamic, and frontman masses is droning vocals. So the word droning here is what Storon. out to me. And I feel like that's kind of where this genre kind of steered away from its predecessors

with like, you know, post-punk and also kind of steered away from another genre that spawned from this, which would be just straight up grunge music, right? Yeah, definitely, because you mentioned Sonic Youth, right? Yeah, and we're going to play a clip from one of their albums. They're definitely, you know, considered sort of like them and the pixies, you know, they're sort of the predecessors to grounds like you're saying. So, yeah, you're probably right to say that like there's a split that obviously happens, right? Yeah, so I'm going to continue this quote here. It says it was its own bizarre hybrid. It wasn't exactly pop.

It wasn't exactly punk rock. It was completely its own thing. Yeah. So again, this is 1987. Let's jump one year ahead and I'm going to play a song from Sonic Youth's album, Daydream Nation, which came out in 1988. It's called Teenage Riot. Yeah, man. I mean, that's for a long time has been one of my favorite songs from that era. I love that song, dude. It's great. Yeah, it's so good. And here's what I love about it, dude. And this is why I'm firmly. now in like the shoe gaze camp for music around this time. I just love the repetitiveness of the guitar riff, I guess. I don't know how to, you know, it's like, yeah, I mean, they mentioned, they mentioned Dinosaur Jr.'s vocals being drony. Yeah.

But to me, I feel like that's a good description of the sound of shoegaze and dream pop. sure and the and you know the the the genres that that gave birth to shoe gaze um i just love it dude i love that like hypnotic kind of state that this kind of music can put you in especially it once we get into loveless man that's what it's all about um let's do it so well okay you know what i was i was looking at our timestamp here we're we're under half an hour into recording. I have one more artist I want to play because I think this kind of is a good representation of like another style of music that I feel like these artists pulled from. And this is a song that's kind of different from the other songs that this artist was releasing at the time.

But I'm talking about the band The Jesus and Mary Chain, which I don't know about you, dude, but I really didn't know that much about this band until I looked into my bloody Valentine and Shugaze. But they have an album that came out in 1985 called Psycho Candy. I'm going to play track 10 off of this album. It's called Sowing Seeds. You can definitely hear it. The influence, you know.

So what I liked about this song and the reason I wanted to play it, like, what I love about music and we say this all the fucking time, dude. I love the ways that bands will continue to pull from the past as far as music goes and just kind of build on top of that.

This song is just a straightforward, like, pop ballad that could have come out in the 50s, you know, or 60s or, you know, early 60s. Yeah, I mean, obviously it would have sounded a little bit different, but yeah, I hear what you're saying. Yeah, it's just that straightforward

you know, what was the term they used to use? Tini Bopper, no. Yeah, I mean, yeah. You know what I mean? I don't know if I would classify. I mean, yeah, there's a little bit of that like really, basically just a really simple melody is what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah, but they, but they, you know, what Jesus and Mary Chain did with that was, you know,

throw in all the, all those effects and reverb on his voice. But yeah, they kept it really simple. And if you listen to more music by the Jesus and Mary Chain from this album and going forward, there's a lot of heavy distortion and punk with their music. But I just, you know, skimming through their works, I just, when this song popped up, I was just like, yeah, I got to play this song. Just because the fact, you know, the fact that came out in 85, it made me think, okay, this is the music. that bands like, you know, Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine,

this is what they were listening to, you know? All right, so let's dive into some My Bloody Valentine, and we're talking specifically about their album from 1991 called Loveless. So, just briefly here, I wanted to name off a few other big albums from some heavy hitters of the time. both Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam released their debut albums in 91. Pearl Jam's tin, Smashing Pumpkins, Gish.

Red Hot Chili Peppers kind of made their way into like the mainstream with their album Blood Sugar Sex Magic. And then of course you have Nirvana with her album Nevermind. Dude, it's so important. I'm glad you do that because it's, I always love just what is the landscape at the time, you know? Like I always, I think it's always really important to, to get that for context and stuff, you know.

Yeah, and dude, and for us, so we were four in 91. We weren't paying attention to music. No, we weren't paying attention, but the stuff that we were going to hear on the radio, it was not my bloody Valentine. Yeah. It may have been Nirvana or maybe Pearl Jam. Grounds took over. And smashing pumpkins even, but we did not hear my bloody Valentine.

And that's because we didn't have anyone that, you know, we didn't have anyone in our family. We didn't have an older brother that was into that. No, yeah, because he went to the other side. He was, he was fully into grunge. Dude, he was on the other side of the coin. We certainly heard Smashing Pumpkins at a young age. I remember he had, he had, um, Siamese Dream and he had all, and he had all those other albums.

So yeah, I mean, we heard that's the side of rock that we were exposed to. So yeah, that's why, you're right, dude. That's why we never got exposure to this because. we were too young it just wasn't i mean dude gruntz was everywhere dude grunge obviously one between the two like that we're not saying we're not saying anything groundbreaking here you know no right but here but again like what i love so much about this and what i love about music is that like to me shoegaze is grunge dude and uh why you know why are you saying that though it's just the other side of the coin that's my point i'm gonna disagree with you on that but i's fine i don't think there's

the only argument you can make is that if rock and roll had these two divergent branches or whatever on the tree well think about this then maybe they branched off around the same time but I don't know okay here dude I'm because

because I'm so in love with the whole coin concept like you can't get enough you take a coin you say okay here's rock and roll in 1991 yeah here's one side it's you guys the other side is grunge I feel like they're just

they just kind of go hand in hand. You know what? I can run with that. I can roll with it. All right. I appreciate that. I don't see.

You're not, you're not completely far off base here. Thank you. Okay. So, I'm going to start off with kind of diving into, I'm not going to name off the roster yet, but we're going to talk about Kevin Shields.

So I mentioned briefly earlier. He's like, he's the mastermind behind the sound. He is one of the singers and he's like the. main guitar player for my bloody valentine so he developed this technique uh that is now it's referred to as glide guitar uh where the guitar player will you know strum the guitar while holding the whammy bar you know with a tremolo arm sure um but he's kind of they're they're kind of pressing it you know they're using that whammy bar back and forth while they're

strumming it. It kind of makes this, it makes this really weird, like, uh, warbly sound. I don't know how to describe it. I mean,

that's what the, the whammy bar does, you know. Yeah. But, you know, but, you know, so they're doing it kind of really slight,

subtle, right? They're doing it really kind of subtly, subtly while they're strumming or what? So here, let's just, I'm just going to let Kevin talk about it. Okay.

So, he, only played, as far as I know, you know, once he developed the sound, he only played Fender Jazzmasters and Fender Jaguars. The Jaguire, that's actually really important

that you mentioned that because, obviously, the Jaguar is what Kirk Obain played. Really? Kirk Obain played a Fender Jaguars. So yeah, that's notable. Well, yeah. So, and there's a reason

behind that. So Fender released this series of interviews with, you know, heavy hitters in rock and roll that played Jazz Masters for the guitar's 60th anniversary. One of the artists they interviewed was Kevin Shields, and I'm going to play just a little bit of that interview. So this clip starts right as Shields is describing this Jazzmaster guitar that he used during the recording of one of their early EP. P's called You Made Me Realize. It was a 64, a red 64, and it just happened that the trauma one was set. Some of them were, they can all be a bit different, but his one was the set that it was kind of unusually high, you know, this by Pure Luck.

And I picked it up and started to kind of go, well, this is cool, you know. And literally, the first song that I ever did using it was a song from the May I Realize EP called Thorne. That was the first hour. I discovered it. And then, and it's two hours later, I did a song called Slow, which was the first time

I did that melted kind of effect. I put it through a reverse reverb, and then thought, well, that sounds good. And I thought, oh, turn the tone down. It thought, wow, it sounds totally like some weird tape

sort of copy of a copy of a copy. And then it was playing fast and sort of bending the tremor arm and it's sort of going, it's all happened in like one afternoon. Okay, so basically Shields, used a jazz master guitar in the studio while they recorded their EP,

you made me realize back in 88. The reason he used it is because the producer-engineer guy at the studio had a jazz master. And he says, like, here, use this. And he mentions that you pick up a jazz master and that whammy bar is going to be, it's going to be in different spots on, you know, on the guitar. They don't always put it in the exact same spot, but this one happened to be kind of higher up just by chance. And so that made it easier for him to manipulate it. To manipulate it, yeah.

And since then, like, again, that's all he uses is Jazzmasters, but he will have them custom made for him where they're really high up. So he developed this technique again, like he had said, and you can kind of hear it in the song that was playing in the background. That was one of the songs from that EP. Um, no, I will say Q, that, that bass sound definitely sounds grungy. So I'm, okay, well, dude, this is 88. I'll give it to you. Yeah, okay, this is 88. And he, he admits, like, our early stuff, not really the best representation of, of what I envisioned, you know, like what I wanted.

So, just wait until you get to loveless, dude. Okay. Dude, I've been waiting 30 minutes here. So he would combine, like he mentioned in the clip, he combined this technique that he created alongside reverse reverb. Yeah, that's often like when you think about the shoe gaze sound, like I said earlier, it's a lot of fuzz and a lot of reverse reverb. So yeah, yep.

And then another thing he would do is tune two neighboring strings of his guitar to nearly the same pitch. So that also kind of gave this kind of unique sound. Okay, so I got a couple quotes, and then we're going to dive into our first song from Lovelace. So I'm quoting someone from BBC here. Kevin Shield's guitar riffs were drowned in an ocean of feedback, played at a volume designed to shake buildings and make a few ears bleed. So you've got Kevin Shields and his ocean of feedback. You've also got Belinda Butcher, who also sings in this band. She also plays guitar. You've got drummer, Kohlm O Klaussoig. God damn it. And bassist, Deb Gouge. When you hear My Bloody Valentine and the whole band playing together,

this is another quote here, the whole unit often functions as a single pulse. I love that line. Let's jump into our first song. I'm jumping to track two off of the album. This song is called Lumer. You know, the vocals remind me of Billy Corgan a little bit. Yeah, dude, actually, there's a song on this record that, like, right off the bat, it just sounds like a smashing pumpkin song. So that was kind of a short clip, but it kind of gives you.

an idea of that of the vibe yeah i mean like you said it's just like there's almost it's very hard to even hear like the the distinct instruments as far as like the guitar but like you said they're all kind of it's all just one unit you know it's all just one wall of sound they all just you know merged together yeah and here's what i love about about that you know after diving into this this was all like very much calculated by shields. So there's this kind of dense, like, tone. Very lo-fi. Most of the record was recorded in mono.

All the tracks were placed right in the middle of the mix. So I'm quoting someone from this really great article from inmore audio.com. It's called engineering the sound, and it dives into, like, it really nerds out about how this record was recorded. And they say,

all of these tracks being placed right in the middle of the mix, primarily in mono, challenges the listener to carefully analyze each musical element with every repeated listen. And it's that wall of sound, right? Like, it's just all just kind of,

this just all washed out, you know. Did you... Well, hold on that saying. I didn't mean to do that. Yeah, I was going to say, you said, you said it washed out? I didn't mean to do that. So I'm going to quote Kevin Shields again

as part of the vision of his sound. I really like this. He says, when you go to small concerts, it's not loads of bass and hi-fi sound. It's mid-range noise, with everything fighting to be heard. And it's very exciting sounding.

and I didn't hear that in music. So that's why our records became quite mid-ranging. I thought that was cool. Like, what a cool idea. You know, like, when I go to a concert, like it doesn't sound like how I hear it on the record, especially if it's like a small venue. Like, everything just kind of gets drowned out in the reverb

and, you know, like reflection of the noise, bouncing off the walls and all that. So they wanted to capture that on the record. They wanted to capture that on the record. Okay. So I still got a lot of really great stuff to dive into about the recording of this album. But first, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. And we're back and I wanted to kind of dive into a little bit more into that sound that he created in the recording of this album,

specifically with the guitar. There's a lot of things going on in this record that you might not notice. which is on purpose actually. So in the background on almost every song, as far as I know, on this record, there's this guitar feedback recording that Shields recorded from his Jazzmaster to a digital audio tape, which is similar to a cassette tape, you know. So basically, like, recording down in quality, right? like recording to something lower in quality.

And then he would sample that guitar feedback through an Akai keyboard to where he could trigger each sound and create a melody. So he created melodies with nothing but guitar feedback. And then he would mix this feedback super low down into the track to where you almost wouldn't notice it. So basically he was like, you know what, this needs. even more noise. So let me just go through all this trouble.

Yeah. And I'm quoting one of their engineers. So they actually went through like quite a few studios and quite a few producers and sound engineers for this album. I wonder if it's one of those things where like they had, you know, it's like trying to find a doctor to give you some weird plastic surgery, you know. Right. Just like I'm not like you guys, this is super noisy here. We need to, you know, unnoise it a little bit. I was like, no, we got to move on to the next one.

And from what I read, I mean, they spent a lot of money on this record, dude, a lot for the time. So, but I'm quoting one of the engineers here said that throwing in this feedback at this low volume, like again, it would go unnoticed, really. But it gave the song this bubbling little tone underneath. It's quite subtle, but you couldn't take it out because it was a major part of it. the track. So I'm going to play my next pick here. Now, I don't know for sure if this is like a good example of like, okay, here's that feedback. But again, like it's something that goes unnoticed, but like this guy is saying, you can't pull it out because it's just a major part of that sound. This is maybe my favorite song on the record. This is track five. It's called When

You Sleep. Yeah, man, that's a great, great track. Is that your first time hearing it? Yeah. That's the first time I've heard. That makes me so happy, dude. Yeah, man. So, okay, so here's the thing. So let's just talk about for a second, um, slow dive, or at least compare the two because we were, okay, mentioned on the slow dive episode that like, slow dive was like overshadowed by my bloody Valentine, right? Yeah, yeah. And dude, and the album that we covered, um, or one of the albums that we, like, one of the songs that we covered was from an album that came out in 91. So yeah.

And they were record, they were label mates, dude. They were on the same record label. Yeah, yeah. So what I was going to say was like, what I'm noticing is that my bloody valentine's music seems to be a bit more melodic than slow dive. They're like,

it sounds more interesting and more exciting. Yeah. Exciting is a good way to put it because I feel like slow dive is more like, um, slow. It's more of a safe bet. Right? Well, what do you mean by that? As in like, I feel like Slo'd have took less risks.

Sure, I mean, but they were just more like, and this is probably the sound that they were going for, but they were just more, they were more melancholy. Melancholy and more drone-like, you know. Yeah, yeah. If we're talking about the shoegaze and it being drone, a lot of drone stuff. Yeah, yeah. My bloody Valentine, I'm not hearing much drone, or at least, you know, in the tracks that you play, they are very melodic, you know. Yeah, absolutely. But they're doing that wall of sound in the same.

You know, it's just a, to me, it just seems like a better execution of that. Yeah, that's just my opinion, obviously. Yeah, totally. So, you know, I mentioned there were quite a few studios and engineers involved. Lovelace was recorded over two years, 19 different studios, over a dozen different engineers. That's insane to me. How many, how many albums are there? Like, I don't know. How many albums are there that they can say, yeah, we went to 19 different studio.

19. Yeah, that's pretty wacky. And we had over a dozen different engineers involved in getting this done. That is crazy to me. So, like, do you know any, like, what's the reason behind that? Like, is there any, do they explain at all, like, why they couldn't land on a studio? I don't know, dude. I mean, honestly, I didn't, like, I didn't see anything that, you know, there's no, like, there's

no like huge story behind it because there obviously it's either you know he he was it just a perfectionist type thing going on here i feel like probably yeah just weren't getting along with the studios or like the studios just weren't so you know like the like the case with most frontmen and lead singer you know well it sounds to me like this guy had a very specific sound that he's going yes you know yeah absolutely um so one thing i thought that was interesting i feel like what we need to bring up here I thought was really interesting. Their drummer, again, his last name is hard for me to pronounce. His first name's Colm.

Colm got really sick during the recording of Loveless. And again, this was over a span of two years here. So he was absent from a pretty large amount of the album's recording. So Shields actually recorded hundreds of, different drum hits and beats and drum fills from Colm. And then he cut them up and created the drum tracks himself for nine out of 11 of these songs. So the majority of the drums that you hear are sampled hits, you know, and little drum fills and stuff from Colm, but pieced together by shields. Interesting.

Yeah. The first song that I played as our little intro clip, the song's called Only Shallow. That was actually calm playing the drums live. But it's interesting because you listen to the whole album all the way through, and you can't tell the difference. Well, it's funny because we talked about how slow dive, like the guy was slowly phasing out the drummer because he was doing electronic.

But this was kind of the opposite where it's like, Yeah, he wanted, he, he, yeah, he wanted Colm's drumming still intact. Yeah. So he did the best he could by, by recording as much as he could of Colm and his beats and slice them together and stuff. That makes me respect the guy. Yeah. I don't know why, because it's like, you know, you said this guy was sick, right?

Yeah. All I read was that he was recovering from an illness. Okay. So instead of just go under the electronic drum machine, they did whatever they could to get his sound in the studio with it. Yep. To literally have his, you know, drumsticks beating the snare. Yeah, I like that. You know, that's cool.

I like that. Okay, so my next clip, so I've done this a few times before in past episodes. And it's really important with this album to kind of show transitions between songs. Okay. Again, I mentioned those, the guitar feedback that he kind of placed low in the mix. Well, if you listen to a song all the way through, towards the end, a lot of times he'll kind of let these guitar feedback loops just kind of linger and kind of transition you really nicely into the next song. So I'm going to play at the very end of When You Sleep, which is the song we just played. and we're going to fade us right into the next track,

which might be my all-time favorite, my Bloody Valentine song. It's really hard to pick one. But these two songs back to back, my favorite, like, snapshot of My Bloody Valentine. Yeah, I'm glad you did that, man. Because, yeah, you're right. It is important sometimes to hear how an album transitions from song to song,

especially when it's obviously done intentionally, right? Yeah. Like that's not a coincidence that those two songs come one after another because it's such a, like it hits you, like more so, like, you know, we talk about, oh, it's a wall of sound, you know, it just comes at you. Like that transition from the, from the, you know, basically the reverb coming off the last track that goes straight into that like loud hit of that riff. I mean, it's just, it's awesome, dude.

Yeah, if it was just an abrupt, like, end and then half a second of silence and then boom right into this song, yeah, it wouldn't be the same. It's more effective that way. And we even talked about this on the last episode when we were just kind of reintroducing ourselves and whatnot. Like, the reason that this is significant is because this was the 90s, there were no iTunes wasn't a thing yet, or at least in the 91, it wasn't. Yeah. Like people didn't just buy, you know, people would a lot of times push play on a record and let it play. Yeah.

And so you would get to hear these, you'd get to hear these transitions, you know? Right. And if you, if you jump on Spotify and, you know, again, press play on the top tracks from an artist, it's going to be pulling you from one album to the next. You're not going to hear these transitions. Like, that's what we're all about, man. And that's as far back as I can remember. and I'm not like pat myself in the back or anything,

but like I've always just appreciated albums as a whole, you know? It's the only way to get the true, uh, the full picture of what the, what is, you know, an album is a piece of art as a whole, right?

So you can't get the full picture unless you listen from start to finish, you know? Yeah. Okay, so real quick here, as we're wrapping up here. That's all the songs I have for this record. Um,

let's talk about, the vocals real quick. So, and I, you know, this goes in line with the genre. And again, when I think of shoe gaze, I think of my bloody Valentine. Part of it is that vocals that are kind of like low in the mix, like again, that was kind of what they were going for, just wall of sounds, you know, everything's just all right there. I think you can't tell what they're saying a lot of times. It's just all just kind of lost in, you know, in the super loud feedback and distortion and all that. That was another thing that was intentional by Shields.

One thing that he did was he would take a dozen vocal tracks. So, you know, a dozen of the same part of a song sung. He would take these different tracks and stack them on top of each other and play them simultaneously. which kind of gave this weird chorus effect. Another thing that Shields wanted was to kind of have like an intimate setting for him and Belinda when they were singing. He made sure that the vocal booth was kind of curtained off, you know, kind of shielded from everything else so that no one else could see them singing.

And then he told their sound engineer to turn off the monitors and the control room. so that their engineer couldn't even hear them while they were singing. You know, so that again, like you said, you know, you respect Shields for making sure that the drummer was still heard, even though he couldn't play. This is something that I respect about the guy a lot.

Like, you wanted to make sure that Belinda, you know, that they were comfortable, you know, singing during this album. And that's, to me, like, that's crazy that he told The sound engineer who was there to engineer the sound, turn off your control monitors. I don't even want you to hear us. That's crazy to me. Yeah, that's interesting.

She must have had, you know, there must have been moments where she was, you know, had some stage fright or something like that or like, you know, it was a little gun shy about singing in front of people. Yeah. Another thing it says here that they blanketed the booth. So, and it says here that that would eliminate reflections, you know, or. their voices bouncing off of anything. So everything was, like the walls and everything was completely blanketed. So that would kind of dampen the sound. And then he threw it into this compressor too.

And then on top of that, you know, he created this chorus of sound by just stacking all these vocal tracks on top of each other. Really cool. That's all I got, dude, for this record. So was this the first time he really gave it a listen as well or what? No, dude. This is one of those albums. So shout out to Larry Lodra, who we've had on our podcast. We covered Nick Drake's Brider Later with him quite a few episodes back. But he shared this album with me back in probably 2007. And yeah, dude, I'm very familiar with this album. I love it. It's one of my favorites again.

Awesome, dude. I hope you give it a good listen now. Yeah, I will, dude. I'll cue it up. start to finish bro. You don't got to tell me that. Don't walk off and go to some meeting and come back and forget about it. I mean, I can't say I'm not going to go into a meeting tomorrow because it's going to happen. Okay, well, like go to, you know, take a walk, take a long stroll in the neighborhood or something. Put some earbuds in.

That's a long-ass stroll, dude. This album's like over 40 minutes long, dude. Dude, don't worry about it. It'll get done. I'll listen to it. All right. All right. So I want to give credit where credit is due because we're bringing back a segment.

And I think the only reason we're bringing it back is because a dear coworker of mine, her name's Leewa, was super bummed that we got rid of our Whatcherard segment, dude. She's not going to be bummed anymore because we're bringing it back. Awesome. So Watcher Heard's is basically music that we've heard over the last couple weeks, in between our full-length episodes. It can be a brand-new song. It can be some random-ass old song that we heard just randomly.

You know, it can be something you heard on the radio. Shit, man. One time my what you heard was freaking Babylon that song about that one guy. David Gray. Yeah. So let's start with you, Trave. What you've been heard and do lately?

Q, have you heard of the band called The O-C's? Yes, I have. I fucking love them. Well, it's possible you've heard this then. I love them, but I haven't really dove into them enough. Okay. But I'm a fan. I'm a fan. Just get ready to blow your load, dude.

I'm ready. So they came out with an album back in August, well, back in August, two weeks ago. So they came out with an album two weeks ago called Face Stabber. And it's their latest full length. and the OCs, they seem to kind of evolve and experiment a lot with their sound from album to album. They even change their name quite a bit.

Like, you know, this album, I think they just go by OCs now. But, you know, they've gone through a number of different iterations. But again, this album is called Face Stabber. It's got this dope-ass album art, dude. Yeah, I like it. It looks like an ogre of some kind. Yeah, it looks like an oger of some kind. you would see in a Dungeons of Dragons manual or something like that.

Yeah. But anyway, so this album is basically, you know, it's like a, it's progressive rock almost. Like, it sounds like, you know, it sounds like can or, you know, a little bit of yes here and there, like you can see snippets of it, you know, like this is, to me, the OCs, or at least this album is sort of like the net, like it's, it's a progressive album in the year 2019. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm looking at a song that's 14 minutes long.

Right. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. But like, you know, it's a very consistent album. They don't, they don't really bounce around too much. Like, it's, it's all very consistent. But it's also, it's very experimental from time to time. But it's very, it's progressive and psychedelic.

But it's, it's incredible. It's one of those albums you've got to push play on and just let it rip. But anyway, we're going to play one song here. and we're going to play maybe two minutes of it because you got to get a good feel for it. But it's track five and it's called FooZ. Yeah, dude, that's straight up like King Crimson. Yeah, man.

Can, uh, yes. Yeah, exactly. Straight up. It's fucking great. That's crazy, man. That's nothing like what I've heard of theirs. Yeah, I mean, they're, another thing worth noting about these guys. It really, it's just, it's,

one main guy, his name is John Dwyer, but he's just super prolific, man. Dude, I mean, how often is that the case? You know, we've talked about Came Impala. You mean the fact that it's one guy? Yeah, it's just one guy. And, you know, all these years you think it's a full band, you know, a collective effort and it's just one person.

I'm just saying, if you look at their discography, you know, they're putting out records, you know, sometimes twice in a year, you know. they're putting out a record. But yeah, so anyway, like I said, pull it up, push play. You're not going to be disappointed. It's a great listen through. Awesome.

All right. So, my what you heard is something I literally heard this morning for the first time. Wow. This is fresh, man. Fresh is it? Not only is it fresh for me, but it's a fresh-ass album, dude. It came out on August 23rd. Fresh ass.

So have you heard of an artist that goes by J-sum? I don't believe so. So her name is Melina Duterte, and she goes by J-Sum. And she just released her second album under the name. Dude, if you want to say something crazy, man, she's playing a... I'm looking at a picture. She's playing a Jaguar. Nice. Do you want to tie it back to...

Dude. So I... followed a link to a pitchfork review of this album and I clicked on it simply because I liked the album art. Look at that beauty, dude. Yeah, that's nice. I put that on my wall, dude. I bought it today. Oh, you bought the album. I bought the album today. Dang. Um, listen, man, this is just one of those albums you press play and you're like, okay, yep, I'm totally into it. Um, okay. So, I'm just going to quote this pitchfork reviewer, uh, at the very big, beginning, she says, Malina Duterte's second album is J-Sum sounds exploratory and playful,

like a jam session among friends that's just hit its stride. I'm just going to let the music play for itself, dude. So this is a few tracks down in the album. It is called devotion. Yeah, man, I'm, I'm into it. Soul, right? Yeah, I mean, so, dude, just that transition that she does. did there at the end with that organ sound. Yeah. Man. Dude, and it's all about that bass line, right?

Yeah, dude. Yeah, so I'm guessing the whole record's like that, right? Well, honestly, I picked that song because it's the most poppy.

There's more songs that are a little bit more, I don't know, psychedelic. The word bedroom pop is thrown around a few times describing her. Okay, let's hold on.

Let's just like a quick second here. What would you say the difference between bedroom pop and dream pop is. Okay. Because one could easily confuse the two, dream, bed. So I think bedroom specifically

bedroom pop, I think that kind of has a more DIY feel to it. Okay, yeah. You know, I feel like bedroom pop a lot of times, you know, with artists that we've covered before, and I'm going to say the word hypnagogic pop

just for my... I feel like we can't go one episode I'm saying the word. The reason I bring it up is half joking because my friend from work, Lee Waugh, told me today because she just listened to one of our recent episodes. She said, dude, I'm going to make a fucking drinking game

for every time you guys say the word hemogogic pop and I'm going to be plastered by the time the episode. Dude, what's her name? Her name's Lee Wa. Leewa. Cheers. Cheers.

No, but like, we've, you know, with bands like Tyco that we've covered washed out. I'm sure there's another one that I can't think of. But like, you know, they start out literally in their bedroom with their keyboard. Okay. One shitty-ass mic. They press record, you know, I feel like that's... Well, let me tell you who I think of. Who I immediately think of is Mac to Marco.

Okay. Yeah, exactly. But it's that like, almost like... I don't know. Like you, I mean, yeah, like you said, like DIY vibe to it. Yeah. Right. But anyway, yeah, I'm definitely going to give that a listen, dude.

Love it. So, yeah, I mean, this is, I think we've proven why we need to continue to do what you heard. Because, you know, where else are you going to hear my ability of Valentine, some shoegaze, followed by progressive rock, followed by whatever you want to call that last track. I mean, yeah, this is what we're all about, man, sharing music with each other. and with anybody who's willing to listen to this podcast. Yeah, and let me just say, I think the reason we took it away is because we were worried that our episodes were getting too lengthy. And like we wanted to make sure that we, you know, dove right into the artist that we were covering for the week.

You know, we just wanted to get right into the meat of the episode first. You know, so we're going to do our what your herds at the end now. And that's it for today. I'm super glad that I got to share some My Bloody Valentine's tunes with you that you've never heard before, dude. That's awesome. I hope you really give this album a good listen. It is totally worth, you know, press play and listen to you all the way through.

Totally worth it, man. Yeah, I definitely will. Good. So, Kea, what are we covering for our side track? Do we know? So we have been kind of hanging out in this Shugay's territory for a bit now because we covered slow dive a week before. I think we should mix it up a little bit.

Okay, I'll see what. Dude, I mean, the fact that we mentioned Sonic Youth and Dinister Jr., you could play one of their tracks, dude. Okay, yeah, I'll look into it. Actually, you know what, dude? Okay, never mind. I'm not going to spill beans.

All right. All right, and then the following week, what's our next full-length going to be? I think we already figured it out, but I don't remember. Do we want to wait and spoil that later? We'll spoil it later. All right. So that is it for this week. Thank you so much for listening. And hey, hop on to the Pantheon

Music Network. There are a ton of awesome music podcasts within our network. Give them a listen, man. There's a lot of great content out there. We are again super excited to be part of the family. And be sure to hop on our website at some point in your life. No Filler Podcast.com There we've got our show notes where we'll post links to every single article that we pull content from. We'll have links to videos and interviews. We'll have a full track list from every song that we covered, including our What You Heard's. Lots of great information on our website.

And for our outro today, I'm going to play another song from My Bloody Valentine's 1988 LP that I talked about earlier called You Made Me Realize. This is the EP where you first hear Kevin Shields kind of experimenting with that technique, that glide guitar technique. It's a little bit different than Loveless, but I really like it. So we're going to outro us out with one of those songs. And yeah, next week we'll be coming back at you with a sidetrack, another artist in the same vein. Until then, thank you so much for listening.

So this song is called Thorn off of My Bloody Valentine's 1988's 1988 EP, You Made Me Realize. My name is Quentin. My name is Travis. And you all take care.