Thursday, August 30, 2007

My Bloody Valentine - Lose My Breath

The Cocteau Twins purchased the land. The Jesus and Mary Chain laid the foundation. Galaxie 500 put up the walls. However My Bloody Valentine threw a roof on it and called it a house. The house of Shoegazeee! Since I'm now realizing I have yet to actually explain where the term "Shoegaze" came from, it was coined by the press to describe bands with motionless live shows, ones who would play their instruments and gaze at their shoes. Thankfully these days the word is just associated with the music and most don't seem to care about the origin or the term. The guy who coined it sounds like a prick anyways. Yeah, stick it to the NME and celebrate the term. It does sound pretty psychedelic at face value.

So in 1988 My Bloody Valentine put out their first record, Isn't Anything. They had a few EPs before that, but for the most part they aren't worthwhile. I think this album a lot of the time gets overshadowed by Loveless. Yeah, Loveless is definitely a masterpiece and the better album, but Isn't Anything has its greatness too. I actually like this one song, "Lose Your Breath" more than anything from Loveless. I've already done an entry on this song, albeit focusing more on the Deerhoof cover, but I don't have much new to add here.

My Bloody Valentine - Lose My Breath


"Keep coming now
Possessed of nothing more than hell
Before I can speak
My world is wishing me asleep

Weigh me down
And when the darkness comes around
Repeating heads
Remember nothing I have said
Where are you
Come back again I want you to
'Not now girl' you say
But I was born to lose my breath"


What the hell... here's the Deerhoof version too. It's one of my favorite covers ever.

Deerhoof - Lose My Breath


My Bloody Valentine - "Lose My Breath" Live in 1989



My Bloody Valentine - Isn't Anything @ Amazon.com

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

never seen that live video before.
classic song, of course.

thanks!

Adrian said...

The term 'shoegaze' comes from the fact that the guitarists from the shoegaze bands tended to stare downwards while playing live. It looked to the audience that they were staring in deep concentration at their shoes. They were in fact manipulating the various effects pedals needed to create the shoegaze sound (e.g. delay, distortion, phasing).

Anonymous said...

A. The audience in that video kill me... talking through MBV... crazy.

B. As much as I love Cocteau Twins, Jesus and Mary Chain, etc, time has shown MBV to be the most enduring band. Everything still sounds so new. It is really remarkable.

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