MBV Radio Interview

[version sound]

This is from Australian radio and very interesting if you want to hear firsthand about the band and it’s development. He also makes a point that I’ve been making for years; MBV were never a shoegaze band. Anyone who wants to argue that point can take it up with Kevin. He also discusses the influence of the Birthday Party, and RSH in particular. Anyway, it’s a good listen if you have any interest in the band.

https://www.abc.net.au/doublej/programs/curated/kevin-shields-mbv-interview/13293944

[gregpolard]

This is from Australian radio and very interesting if you want to hear firsthand about the band and it’s development. He also makes a point that I’ve been making for years; MBV were never a shoegaze band. Anyone who wants to argue that point can take it up with Kevin. He also discusses the influence of the Birthday Party, and RSH in particular. Anyway, it’s a good listen if you have any interest in the band.

https://www.abc.net.au/doublej/programs/curated/kevin-shields-mbv-interview/13293944

Don't almost all "originators" of a subgenre say that they aren't part of that subgenre?

See: emo, pop punk....

[version sound]

There is a distinction to be made between what one band does and how other bands imitate it. People have been calling the Velvet Underground and The Stooges The Godfathers of punk for decades, but they were NOT punk bands. The same is true for MBV. They did something (along with many other bands, like the JAMC, Cocteau Twins, the Birthday Party, AR Kane, and Sonic Youth to name a few) that was very influential on subsequent generations of bands. The British music press invented a subgenre to sell papers. MBV were no more part of that scene than Spacemen 3 or Cocteau Twins (who were more traditionally “shoegazey” and did it before MBV). As Kevin pointed out, just putting a shit ton of effects on guitars has never really been what they were about. Listen to the first wave shoegaze bands. While MBV was a clear influence, they definitely weren’t the only influence, and what those bands were doing only vaguely sounded like an actual MBV record. Later, people did more accurate rip-offs, but those bands are pretty uninteresting, IMO. If I want to hear MBV, I listen to MBV, not a band that came 20 years later and used the internet to figure out exactly what effects they were using, then just straight ripped them off.

[gregpolard]

That's fine imma still call them shoegaze

[version sound]

That's fine imma still call them shoegaze

You should listen to the interview. There’s a lot of interesting ground covered, the least of which is their status as a shoegaze band.

[gregpolard]

Definitely interested!
It looks like the release date for the reissues is next week. I wonder if I'll get my vinyl and shirts then or if it will be pushed back.

[Fillavoid]

Thanks for posting this. I enjoyed hearing him describe how they recorded “To Here Knows When” in some detail. It’s amazing how MBV used way fewer guitar tracks on their songs than we realize. I hope they release the next two albums sooner than later. I appreciated him admitting to his awful track record of meeting deadlines. Haha

[version sound]

Yeah, it would be great to get some new MBV sometime in the next decade.

Being a guitar nerd, I’ve read a bit about his recording process, and yeah, there are generally only one or two guitar tracks on most of Loveless.

[patient_ot]

Later, people did more accurate rip-offs, but those bands are pretty uninteresting, IMO. If I want to hear MBV, I listen to MBV, not a band that came 20 years later and used the internet to figure out exactly what effects they were using, then just straight ripped them off.

I'm in the same boat. Even a band like the Lilys, who I like, were a lot more interesting when they dropped the MBV ripoff stuff and did their own thing.

[JGJR]

Later, people did more accurate rip-offs, but those bands are pretty uninteresting, IMO. If I want to hear MBV, I listen to MBV, not a band that came 20 years later and used the internet to figure out exactly what effects they were using, then just straight ripped them off.

I'm in the same boat. Even a band like the Lilys, who I like, were a lot more interesting when they dropped the MBV ripoff stuff and did their own thing.

Where does a band like Velocity Girl fit into this conversation? Their 1st album Copacetic is probably in my all-time top whatever and an album I've loved since the early '90s. It's the only album of theirs that sounds anything like the American MBV or shoegaze or whatever label they were tagged with, but I think they definitely put their own individual spin on it and sound very different and only a few tracks like "A Chang" are really comparable at all to say MBV or Slowdive, for example. The rest is poppier, a bit faster, etc.

After that album, I haven't heard anything by them that retained my interest (only heard the 2nd Lp but never the 3rd since the 2nd turned me off).

Sometimes, the post-shoegaze era records by the original bands lumped into that scene are better to my ears than the shoegaze era ones. Lush are a great example. Lovelife, their Britpop-era album, is my favorite of theirs, though I like the earlier stuff as well.

[patient_ot]

Where does a band like Velocity Girl fit into this conversation? Their 1st album Copacetic is probably in my all-time top whatever and an album I've loved since the early '90s. It's the only album of theirs that sounds anything like the American MBV or shoegaze or whatever label they were tagged with, but I think they definitely put their own individual spin on it and sound very different and only a few tracks like "A Chang" are really comparable at all to say MBV or Slowdive, for example. The rest is poppier, a bit faster, etc.

After that album, I haven't heard anything by them that retained my interest (only heard the 2nd Lp but never the 3rd since the 2nd turned me off).

Sometimes, the post-shoegaze era records by the original bands lumped into that scene are better to my ears than the shoegaze era ones. Lush are a great example. Lovelife, their Britpop-era album, is my favorite of theirs, though I like the earlier stuff as well.

Copacetic, to me, was like a jangle pop band that played with distortion and occasionally went off into other areas. Think C86 types stuff, or maybe the early Mary Chain, but more American indie rock sounding overall. I don't really categorize them as anything like or related to shoegaze.

Re: Lush, I definitely wouldn't say Lovelife is my favorite, but I like it a lot more now than when I first heard it. I still think their most important stuff is on the early EPs and singles. Split would probably be my favorite studio album of theirs.

[version sound]

Where does a band like Velocity Girl fit into this conversation? Their 1st album Copacetic is probably in my all-time top whatever and an album I've loved since the early '90s. It's the only album of theirs that sounds anything like the American MBV or shoegaze or whatever label they were tagged with, but I think they definitely put their own individual spin on it and sound very different and only a few tracks like "A Chang" are really comparable at all to say MBV or Slowdive, for example. The rest is poppier, a bit faster, etc.

After that album, I haven't heard anything by them that retained my interest (only heard the 2nd Lp but never the 3rd since the 2nd turned me off).

Sometimes, the post-shoegaze era records by the original bands lumped into that scene are better to my ears than the shoegaze era ones. Lush are a great example. Lovelife, their Britpop-era album, is my favorite of theirs, though I like the earlier stuff as well.

Copacetic, to me, was like a jangle pop band that played with distortion and occasionally went off into other areas. Think C86 types stuff, or maybe the early Mary Chain, but more American indie rock sounding overall. I don't really categorize them as anything like or related to shoegaze.

Re: Lush, I definitely wouldn't say Lovelife is my favorite, but I like it a lot more now than when I first heard it. I still think their most important stuff is on the early EPs and singles. Split would probably be my favorite studio album of theirs.

I agree wholeheartedly on both counts. I will add that there were lots of bands in the late ‘80s and into the early ‘90s who played what was more generally referred to as “lo-fi.” This included bands like Pavement and other American indie rock bands. I would include early VG in that group as well. There were also bands I thought of as “guitar noise” bands. These included Sonic Youth, early Mercury Rev, and others. The bands that were later called “shoegaze” were on a similar trajectory, but being British, they also added (most importantly) Cocteau Twins, Creation era MBV, Loop, Spacemen 3, etc. vibes to the mix. “American shoegaze” was a marketing ploy, for the most part. Noisey guitar bands existed in the US before the British press coined that term. I bought the first Lush EP when it came out because it was on 4AD. There was no such thing as “shoegaze” at the time, and although they got lumped in with that crowd (as did any guitar band that used a bit or reverb and feedback), I have never thought of them as “shoegaze.”

To paraphrase the late, great Claude Bessy “I have excellent news for the world. There is no such thing as shoegaze. It does not exist. It’s a figment of some lame music journalist’s imagination.”

[patient_ot]

I agree wholeheartedly on both counts. I will add that there were lots of bands in the late ‘80s and into the early ‘90s who played what was more generally referred to as “lo-fi.” This included bands like Pavement and other American indie rock bands. I would include early VG in that group as well. There were also bands I thought of as “guitar noise” bands. These included Sonic Youth, early Mercury Rev, and others. The bands that were later called “shoegaze” were on a similar trajectory, but being British, they also added (most importantly) Cocteau Twins, Creation era MBV, Loop, Spacemen 3, etc. vibes to the mix. “American shoegaze” was a marketing ploy, for the most part. Noisey guitar bands existed in the US before the British press coined that term. I bought the first Lush EP when it came out because it was on 4AD. There was no such thing as “shoegaze” at the time, and although they got lumped in with that crowd (as did any guitar band that used a bit or reverb and feedback), I have never thought of them as “shoegaze.”

To paraphrase the late, great Claude Bessy “I have excellent news for the world. There is no such thing as shoegaze. It does not exist. It’s a figment of some lame music journalist’s imagination.”

The thing with British rock journalism at the time was they always wanted to have a scene to build up and then later destroy. It didn't really matter what it was or if the bands they felt like grouping together sounded fairly different from each other beyond the surface, it helped them sell magazines.

[version sound]

Absolutely. I read the British music papers pretty regularly in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and that was their stock and trade. They always had to invent a new scene to hype, then destroy as soon as the next new thing came along.

I would argue that both shoegaze and Emo only really became genres when bands started to play a specific type of music to fit those titles. If you look at the bands from the original scene that were derisively referred to as “shoegazers,” they don’t have much in common. Compare Chapterhouse to Swervedriver to Slowdive to Ride to Moose. What do they have in common? Guitars? They all used effects to a certain degree, but it didn’t really define any of them, IMO. None of them actually sounded like MBV.