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| The cover does justice to the album |
I was going write about Radiohead. “Kid A” was the first album that threw me into musicophilia. "Loveless" solidified it. It became the album to which I compared all other albums. It is and has remained my favorite. I refer to it as a flawless masterpiece - the best album ever made.
An orgasm of perfect noise; the atmosphere; the enigmatic singing blended in with tangible instruments producing otherworldly sounds - a capgras of what I thought music was and what it could do; the anomalies that surprise but find a place with all of the lush overgrowth. Calling it a gift that keeps on giving is to needlessly point out the infinite expansion of the universe.
"Loveless" has so much to offer that I have yet to exhaust its replay value. It’s a rare album that I am compelled to play in its entirety. One track is not enough - I need the whole cake.
It is impossible for me to write an objective review of it. I have chosen to put personal thoughts and feelings into this piece. Warning to the reader of contrivances and schoolgirl crush cliches; I can’t talk about this album without talking about the impact it has had on me and how I carry it with me. I have had an ongoing infatuation with "Loveless" since I first heard it in 2005. It was on a summer afternoon in my bedroom while on a study break. Procrastination with fornication.
And so the diary begins.
Hundreds of listens later and I see no end in sight for "Loveless" being my number one. I’ve played it in my headphones while working out, running along dirt paths, races, cooking, homework, aloud during love-making, leisurely reading, spacing out, dinner parties, regular parties. This is a symptom of a perfect album: you find any reason or occasion to play it.
"Loveless" achieves perfection by overdoing it on motifs to an excess. One that makes sense. It is sealed and aerodynamic, even while at the bottom of its own millions of Pascals. It has a hum that drenches it heavily from start to finish. Only tongue-speaking vocals: indecipherable but heavenly. Thick, pea-soup, hallucinatory guitar work; mantle-deep drumming; catchy but mystifying instrumental choruses; hints of other genres but a forge all its own; experimental but not so much as to diminish its virulence. Where these binding motifs would restrain the album, each track offers something unique but complementing.
I finally have her in my arms after an entire week of not. She’s becoming more estranged to me as finals creep in closer. It only gets worse from here. That comfort zone, that sense of that special someone always going to be there. No matter how many times I run around the world, trying to hold it together. It doesn’t hold. My efforts are worthless. I have been disemboweled and my entrails are spilling out. But the two of us are just branches growing in different directions no longer growing as the same trunk. We can’t rely on coincidence that these detours will coalesce again. We are no longer heading in the same direction.
Tom Wolfe said in his book The Right Stuff that Mach 1 is where a demon lives. You meet that demon first thing on “Only Shallow,” the opening track. It’s everything I wanted out of shoegaze multiplied by n-number of layers spackled on. Thick, German asphalt on the autobahn. Speed limits are nonexistent here. It’s simultaneously gentle and aggressive. A finely tuned engine that growls unintelligibly with eloquence. A slow dance of Jesus and Mary Chain, suckered-punched by Sonic Youth. The beating is done at 3:40 and the outro floats you out with a morphine injection.
After 20 seconds, the full-on siege swells back in with “Loomer,” the second track still marching on the edge of the opener. It ends with the haunting whale sounds of “Touched,” an interlude laiden with leviathan groans that trade off with orchestral samples. These three tracks serve as the album’s grandiose entrance.
“To Here Knows When” and “Blown a Wish” are winks to the Cocteau Twins at their finest. Taking the best of dream pop but doing it justice with an adaptable and strategic rock ensemble. A constantly changing frequency takes place of the singing, turning this into ambience, a soft, walk in the clouds, adiabatically-cooled water vapor percolating between the toes, interspersed with tingling synthesizers as a proxy chorus. Like the opening track, “To Here” tapers off with a sigh.
"I Only Said" is prime bittersweetness. It is "Loveless"’ coup de gras to the heartbreakingly beautiful. It's distortion but it's in flux from the excess of Kevin Shields’ (guitarist) tremolo effect. Hearing guitars produce smooth fluctuations is what this album excels at but is at its best here. It is bioluminescence at the harmonics: soft, glowing lifeforms, congregating at tight knots. Swells and plunges outlining each disturbance on calm surfaces.
This is the song of the album. It's a memory of a lover that I fiend for. Who I am sick to touch. We roll under red blankets. I have only the details of her eyes, skin, hair, teeth. Just the parts against a backdrop of red. I have no idea what the sum total of these parts is. I reach to touch those details but feel only the warm silk. Intangible near-realities that disappear when you try to pull them in. Dumbfounded by beauty. Tantalizing branches of grapes, a dropping tide that plunges the fresh water away from parched lips. It’s impossible to get enough.
It’s 12 a.m. The room is filled with an unknown blue tint. We are underwater. Just hanging out at the bottom of the ocean. I can see the outline of her in strips and patches of aqua. I’m caressing and interacting with a silhouette. Her skin feels so alive and it’s hard to believe that this is the same girl I have been with for years. Something strange but exciting and sexy is happening. It’s that anticipation that happens with someone you have just met. Like being in a secluded section of the house, sneaking and scurrying for privacy in a moment of reckless passion.
The band's story is embedded in this song. It doesn't matter how much beauty you create; all relationships are in flux. The most beautiful ones have the highest potential for being the most destructive. Nothing is permanent and nothing will hold people together forever. Close to permanent are the memories you document. You are tantalus on that rock, reaching for the fruit and crouching for water.
“Sometimes” comes in with a trademark choppiness of post-punk but then transitions into the continuing dreaminess. The churning is persistent throughout the song’s five minute lifespan. It finds harmony but is a clever ode to the band’s roots. Barely-expressed genes in this matured creature, emerged from the chrysalis of post-punk.
You’re carefully progressing, disrobing a little bit more at time, feeling your way around, testing the limits, if any. Eventually you’re both just flesh and skin with hair standing up electrified. You’re an irrational number about to become integer. That “n.” You’re there, you are both whole. It becomes as tangible as granite. You’ve found that formula and it works. Finding completeness as an integer. It throws you into irrational ecstasy. It’s a wonderful contradiction.
“What You Want” stands out as the noise pop track. The rock elements are all discernible yet they are stuck in the foundation of a melodica. This gives way to the dance-heavy “Soon,” where the engineered beat creates a mesmerizing outro. It’s danceable even with the heavy fuzz of the chorus.
It is impossible for me to quench my thirst for this album. It is musical electrolytes. Life blood. It won’t satiate my hunger, satisfy my lust. The only way I can get close to it is knowing people will be listening to it long after I am dead. Instead of having children, I will find immortality in spreading the gospel of this masterpiece.
I’ve found her but I know that this is the end. After this I will only have memories. How sad that I remember the past with such fondness. I wish for the past but it’s gone. On to the next problem. On to the next chapter, class, semester. Once integer now irrational, maybe even imaginary.
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