After a decades-long delay, My Bloody Valentine is back. Was it worth the wait?

PRO: m b v shows the band is still evolving

Musical immortalization is a dicey subject. A band’s sound requires a certain level of unmistakable recognition transcending the span of time to be deemed “classic.” Better yet, it should be understood as products of its time, and, while remaining endlessly replayable, continue to be unmarred and unscathed by the many imitators — both good and bad — the group has inspired.

That being said, My Bloody Valentine, the unequivocal titan of shoegaze and creator of Loveless, one of the best records of the past half-century, is mortal. It’s had a rather tumultuous run post-Loveless, full of scrapped recording sessions and forays into the madness that come from pining for musical perfection, but the band has returned with its third album, m b v, which was released online Saturday night.

I comment on its status as a “mortal” band, though, because m b v is far from a phoned-in effort that signals complacency and satisfaction with past accomplishments. It also does very little to complete its legacy. Instead, we get something both reflective and progressive, a natural follow-up to Loveless in many ways, but also a possible statement of purpose for the future.

I fall somewhere between a My Bloody Valentine completist and a casual listener, so I can attest that patches of m b v — in particular Kevin Shields’ jagged tremolo phrases on “Who Sees You” and Bilinda Butcher’s phantom-hush vocals on the gorgeous, Madchester-nodding “New You” — are perfect and wonderful nostalgia trips.

The last three tracks, however, prove Shields is still the wily enigma he once was. Forgoing the wistful shoegaze of the rest of the record, “In Another Way,” “Nothing Is” and “Wonder 2” are knotty, difficult and cacophonous. With time, these songs will probably reveal themselves to be worthy experiments; in the short term, they prove My Bloody Valentine is still interested in exploring.

This spirit, which is unnoticeable in m b v’s Loveless-inspired first six tracks, is ultimately the reason we cannot shove My Bloody Valentine in a shrine with other “classic,” dormant bands such as Pavement, The Smiths and R.E.M. The band has stood the test of time while remaining a definitive product of its time. But with immortalization comes the eternal use of the past tense. For a band that has only released its third full-length LP, maybe, just maybe, My Bloody Valentine is only getting started.

—Dean Essner

CON: Nostalgia doesn’t make it a good record

There are some bands and albums that are so legendary, you have to come into them at a certain age. Otherwise the magic is lost forever. If you heard In the Aeroplane Over the Sea when you were 15 and liked it, it likely went on to mold your future music taste. But if you heard it when you were 21 and enjoyed it, you will probably just appreciate it for what it is and think Jeff Mangum is kind of a strange guy.

The latter is exactly how I feel about My Bloody Valentine, and it makes me feel like an outcast.

If you like alternative, rock, indie, whatever music, then you’ve heard of the English-Irish shoegazers of My Bloody Valentine and their elusive frontman Kevin Shields, who made a classic album, Loveless, in 1991 and haven’t been heard from since. I don’t have a dreamy story about the first time My Bloody Valentine graced my ears. Instead, I listened to Loveless per a friend’s recommendation and I thought it was pretty good. Maybe if I wasn’t already a fan of more contemporary shoegaze acts such as Ringo Deathstarr and Asobi Seksu, I would think My Bloody Valentine broke more ground with its music.

Well, after many years of waiting and broken promises of new material, My Bloody Valentine announced it would spontaneously release its third album, plainly titled m b v, on Saturday evening. The world was unprepared for it and waited on tenterhooks to see if it would live up to all of their long-formed expectations.

The major problem with m b v is that no one will be interested in listening to it or reviewing it out of context, because this is it! It’s the album some fans have been waiting for since their very birth! Instead of burning out, Shields constructed an indestructible wall of mystery around himself and his music, so when m b v was finally released on a whim, he basically broke the Internet.

Like many of my peers, I gave m b v a thorough listen when it came out. But unlike most people crying on Twitter about how amazing it is, I think it’s a decent noise album that fails to live up to the hype surrounding it. It’s evident that the band and Shields have deviated from their shoegaze and occasional thrashing roots to create a calmer and more experimental work, and sometimes it really succeeds — the second track, “Only Tomorrow,” is filled with slow-burning guitar fuzziness that keeps drawing you in throughout the song. But some parts of the album just fall flat, especially when placed in a modern context. “Is This and Yes” sounds like a boring version of an old Beach House song, and “Nothing Is” builds on itself without any conclusion, like someone’s amateur bedroom project.

I may sound critical, but I do understand that Shields must possess an intense musical genius if he was able to keep so many people interested in My Bloody Valentine’s music for so long. And besides, if someone told me Neutral Milk Hotel was releasing a new album, I would probably freak out too.

—Emily Thompson

diversionsdbk@gmail.com