Loveless ranked!

On the occasion of the 30th birthday of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, here is a ranking (and grading!) of each song.

"Soon"  - After 40 minutes of post-rockin', this - a more conventional track that's like rising from Plato's cave to hear song anew. And then, at the very end, the album's finest moment. It sounds as if the song is continuing in another version, a demo maybe, or heard from another room, throwing you back over the rest of the album to wonder if every song-sound was but a mere moment mined from some sort of celestial stream playing endless variations of My Bloody Valentine music for eternity.  A+
"To Here Knows When" - The archetypal Loveless track. The one that most exemplifies the hibiscus cover of blurred, massed guitars. It asks, how much can you sandblast a track and still have a song? A+
"Touched"  - A+ Why is this track so slept on?!? Because it's a fragment? In its propensity to induce obsession, Loveless is nothing but fragments. The whalesong moans and the strings ache. And then the whalesong aches! All in 56 seconds!
"What You Want" - Ache so good. A+
"When You Sleep" - Come on, baby, make it ache so good. A+
"Loomer" - Sometimes (whatever emotion) don't feel like it should, you make it ache so good. A+
"Only Shallow" - This will always delight because, as the first track, it means, "holy shit I get to listen to Loveless again!"A+
"Blown a Wish" - A song this good, thousands of bees sharing their plaints all at once, can be this low in the ranking? That's Loveless for ya, baby. A+
"I Only Said"  - The roving hook has a touch too much sharpness. And maybe it's a tad too long. Maybe! It's still an... A
"Sometimes"  - The opposite issue. It could use a tad more acuity. Still, yes, an... A
"Come In Alone"  - Too conventional overall. But still damn good so don't come for me! Most albums sag in the middle anyway. Who cares? Look out all the A-plussery surrounding it! A-minus

P. S. Please buy me this duvet cover kthxbye.

Ben Kim on Loveless

Now that we're all coming down from our m b v high, I'd like to share a commentary on My Bloody Valentine that gets at better than anything I've read what inspires such devotion to this band. It's a blurb from Ben Kim of Chicago that appeared in the 1991 Pazz and Jop (March 3, 1992, p. 7). Don't know him. Don't know where else he wrote. But wow!

"Combining the swirling half-sense of the Cocteau Twins with the majestic grunge fury of Sonic Youth might seem obvious - but actualizing the Spectorian potential latent within these two major design trends of post-R.E.M. alternative rock required genius and ability that nobody until My Bloody Valentine could muster. Imagine the passion overload of "Walking in the Rain" stretched to an hour's length: that's how devastating and nearly unbearable Loveless is. Indecipherable singing, from Stipe to Fraser to Moore and beyond, has placed an ever greater burden on the music to evoke, to signify, and it's a weight too great for most. But Loveless's lovingly textured noise and melody achieves that elusive combination of emotional versatility and specificity."

And for the next chapter, MTV Unplugged should invite the band to do an episode to prove once and for all that the melodies are there, though the singing can remain indecipherable for all it matters.