My Bloody Valentine
3Arena, Dublin
★★★★★
“Louder?” Kevin Shields wryly asks the audience on Saturday night as he, Colm Ó Cíosóig, Debbie Googe and Bilinda Butcher lay waste to whatever expectations anyone might have had about My Bloody Valentine’s first headline show in Dublin since 1992.
The visuals of a murmuration of birds that accompany I Only Said are emblematic of the swooping mystery of this wonderfully strange group, who reconnect ghosts of baggy shoegaze, Joe Meek, The Velvet Underground and Brian Wilson.
“We wanted to sound like a band killing their songs,” Shields said a few years ago, but for this show at 3Arena – which the guitarist dedicates to Mani, the late Stone Roses bassist – they sound like a band feeding us with their kiss, to paraphrase one of their songs.
The stridently playful New You is adroitly served by Butcher’s warm voice. The guitars of You Never Should provide focus amid the squall, as does the folk-inflected Cigarette in Your Bed, striking the balance between restraint and force that My Bloody Valentine do so well.
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The drums of Only Tomorrow are pleasingly sloping; the woozy haze of Come in Alone amplifies the swirling guitars of Only Shallow, which itself sounds like a warning bell. A highlight is Off Your Face, so rich in its perfect unity and balance. It is followed by the urgent, scuzzy Thorn.
There is romance in Nothing Much to Lose, spectres of trip hop on Who Sees You, and a radiant dreaminess on To Here Knows When. For much of the night Shields seems lost in a dream, communing with a bank of speakers, disappearing into the wall of sound they have created.
My Bloody Valentine can convey love and menace at the same time. When Shields and Butcher’s cloistered voices trade blows they create a universe that both shelters and challenges. Soon is another highlight; it resembles a dirge-like rave, as perhaps the entire concert does.
The skittering brilliance of Wonder 2 calls on the spirits of drum and bass and discordance. There is a furiosity to Feed Me With Your Kiss. The band’s closing song, You Made Me Realise, is an epic, howling, distillation of their sound: driving drums, warped guitars, trippy vocals and a restless beauty that morphs into beatless noise halfway through.
It consumes us, pushing the corners of physicality and sound. What we might see as limits they traverse, provoking us to be active rather than passive listeners.
It is disorientating, this world of theirs, but a beautiful truth is at work. In a world full of senseless noise, My Bloody Valentine’s sense of disruptive inquiry remains transcendent.
