And damn I see why this record gets so much praise. If I could describe it in one word, it would be 'visceral'. It simply blows you back with the shear volume of sound that every track here forces upon you, it feels like standing in front of a jet engine. But at the same time it never feels uncontrollably or unlistenably noisy. The sounds ebb, flow and spiral. Crashing, heavenly highs are followed by buzzing and lowkey comedowns. Loud-soft dynamics come into play both between tracks in the sequencing of the album, and within tracks themselves. The opener, only shallow, exemplifies this perfectly; smacking you right in the face with this screeching, distorted guitar line that sounds like a buzzsaw before giving way to the gentler verses where Bilinda Butcher's hazy, low in the mix vocals provide the simple lead melody that sticks in your head like some sort of lucid dream. The harsh guitars return throughout the track to snap you out of this haze.
Following only shallow are the three gentlest tracks on the record: loomer, touched and to here knows when. On loomer, there is so much distortion on all of the instruments and everything is mixed way down that only really the lead guitar and Butcher's vocals are clearly audible. The fuzz everywhere apart from the vocals makes it feel like Butcher is standing in the calm at the centre of a hailstorm. There is a weird, dark sense of serenity that the track captures. This dense, foggy atmosphere is carried through touched and to here knows when. However these tracks have a sense of beauty to them, as the addition of gliding synth lines compliment Butcher's voice making them more dreamy than dark.
These lead into the next high-energy track, and perhaps the albums highest high, when you sleep. This duet between frontman Kevin Sheilds and Bilinda is pure catchy indie power pop at its core, it is such as simple song with only really two melodic parts. But the fuzz and noise give it just so much cathartic energy. It is the kind of song you blast as loud as you can out of your cars stereo while breezing along roads in the summer. The following song, i only said, feels like very much a counterpart to when you sleep. It is still quite a high-energy song, but feels more drawn out; and with the juxtaposition of the soaring synth lines against the thicker, meatier bass and drum section feels like it's pulling back down to earth after the blast of euphoria that when you sleep provided.
This leads in quite well into come in alone, where the lower end of the mix is given much more prominence with it's chugging bass and whining guitar. The drums are pretty audible on this track which is pretty uncommon on the record. Sheilds' vocals also remind me a bit of Ian Brown of The Stone Roses, much lower in register than some of the hazy, dreamlike vocals earlier in the record. This is followed by another comedown, in the form of the beautiful ballad sometimes. Much like loomer, the most audible things on the song are Sheilds' hazy, melancholic vocals, the fuzzy bass and a hint of a strummed acoustic guitar; with some quiet synths popping up towards the end of the song. It's simple, but lets you get sucked into the quiet rumblings and is such a unique way to convey the emotional impact of a ballad.
The following couple of tracks are a little weaker than what has come before, mainly due to them not really providing much new that the album hasn't already covered. blown a wish is a droning, looping tune revolving around this simple synth line and Butcher's dreamy vocal melody. what you want follows in when you sleeps footsteps, being a raucous, energetic indie rock song that has been fuzzed out and warped. These songs are still really good on there own merits, but you can tell that at this point in the album, it has mostly shown everything it has up it's sleeve. The one thing it has left, is the alt dance meets shoegaze closer, soon. This 7 minute banger has this propulsive shuffling beat that just makes you want to move as the hazy guitars and Sheilds' woozy vocals wash over you and you settle into a kind of trance. It's a fantastic way to close the album off, dancing in a world of your own.
loveless is fantastic, and it's one of those records that you can hear its influence permeating through rock music up to this day. Aside from the shoegaze subgenre, I can hear it in the stadium-scale, maxed out mixes of the likes of Coldplay's Viva La Vida and much of Muse's catalogue; and the washed out dreaminess of a lot of 2000's and 2010's indie rock. While I don't think it is objectively perfect, it is just one of those records that you hear and trace so much back to it that it makes it a must listen in that regard.
Top Tracks: only shallow, loomer, touched, to here knows when, when you sleep, i only said, come in alone, sometimes, what you want, soon
9/10
