If shoegaze is about building sonic cathedrals, Loveless is the La Sagrada Família.
For our latest Live Listen Closely album listening party chat podcast, we are chiming in with My Bloody Valentine fever as the band prepare to play Dublin for the first time in 33 years this week.
Their seminal and definite album Loveless is considered a classic of shoegaze, a totem of the genre.
Nialler and Aoife Barry discuss the album’s fraught recording process that involved 19 studios, up to 45 engineers, two and a half years and approximately £250,000 of Creation Records for 48 minutes of music.
But what music! Kevin Shields glide guitar and open tunings added an otherness to the record, as did the mono mix and the Enforced Method Acting of getting Belinda Butcher to sing after immediately waking up.
Loveless is a nebulous thing – it’s more of an ambient wall-of-sound than a guitar rock record at times, that nearly bankrupted the label and turned one label exec’s hair white. We discuss it all.
This is an addendum podcast to our original 2022 episode about the album.
Our next listening party event is Outkast’s Stankonia on Wednesday November 26th.
We discuss the record in front of a live Listen Closely audience.
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Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005. He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Cara Magazine, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, co-founder of Lumo Club, event curator, Indie Sleaze club promoter, and producer of gigs and monthly listening parties & events in Dublin.
