When you wake you're still in a dream
Slow fade back in time to a misty dorm room, a musty mattress, and a rickety heater on full blast. 1991. I created a second home, my first real follow-up to the womb. Those were the woozy days of shoegaze, both a new awakening and a half-asleep haze. Kevin Shields fashioned this impenetrable canvas, thicker than Rothko, and he gave it a curious enveloping quality. The listener feels loved. Here then is my third favorite song, and I am hereby founding Subanimal Sounds on these three songs from three tragic but beautiful visionaries: Lee Mavers, Brian Wilson (with an affectionate nod to Van Dyke), and Kevin Shields. Enjoy.
My Bloody Valentine: To Here Knows When (Tremolo EP Version)
This is the best description I know of this time and music. An impenetrable but loving enveloping canvas, like a Rothko..exactly, exactly. I sank into its embrace in a fourth-floor walkup on Thompson Street, my first apt. of my very own, and lived in those MBV albums for a year or so. Where has the love gone…?
Live, of course, it was a different story altogether. So @#$%*& loudddd!
An apartment on Thompson Street? Sounds like a dream right there. My surroundings weren’t nearly so glamorous. I did see MBV live a few times and witnessed that 15-minute jet engine insanity in the middle of You Made Me Realise. People now say they heard little jingly melodies emerge, and Kevin Shields swears it was an audial illusion… I just remember pain.
If anyone feels like one Loveless wasn’t enough for one lonely world (I am of this opinion), and doesn’t get all bothered by bands that so clearly owe a debt to another, I recommend checking out the Fleeting Joys’ Transpondent Desponder. It really is Loveless part 2.