My Bloody Valentine 13/3/2013

I was tempted to go to London for this gig because mbv are a unique band and because the gig was at my favourite venue - The Hammersmith Odeon (aka Apollo). The support were 'Le Volume Courbe' who had two good things about them, their name and the violin playing which was pretty other-worldly. Other than that they seemed a bit overwhelmed by the venue and the audience still taking their seats and moving around. It was OK but not exciting. MBV came on after a long interval and launched straight into a couple of classics from 'Loveless' 'I only said' and 'When you sleep'. It is actually thrilling to hear the extraordinary, snarling, dissonant and beautiful wall of noise that is created onstage by MBV. I was struck on the connection to Phil Spector - another of my favourites. The concept of a wall of sound is the same. The difference are in how it is constructed and also on the relation of the vocals to the sound. With Spector the wall of sound was downplayed and contrasted with the loud and upfront vocal. It served to feature the vocal. With MBV the vocal is downplayed and supports the guitar cacophony. Live it is sometimes difficult to even hear the vocal and it serves as a ghostly but important part of the sound mix. Most of the songs played in the 100 minutes or so they were onstage were old tracks from 'Loveless' or that era at least. There were just a few tracks from the new album. One of the highlights was about half an hour in when they played the brilliant 'Only Tomorrow' from the album. It starts as four rhythmically raucous guitars underpinned by Colm O'Ciosoig's assertive and driving drums. Out of this maelstrom of noise emerges the ethereal guitar riff that defines the track for me. Another highlight was 'Only Shallow' just because it is a favourite track of mine but actually the gig was a tour-de-force from start to finish, the songs following each other with barely a pause, a relentless, high-volume barrage of beautiful music. The volume ratcheted up to 11 for 'You Made Me Realise' more than 10 minutes of white noise subtley enhanced with furious strumming from Kevin Shields at higher and higher frequencies. Those who had not yet installed their free ear plugs rapidly did so or in some cases left. But there was a further track to follow - the amazing 'Wonder 2' off the new album with Colm on guitar rather than drums. Once that was done the band were off, job done, no encore. There is no one else like MBV.