- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Mar 20, 2013The perfect album, albums with no filler, albums that when over, leave you breathless and don't inspire you to want more music from the band, but make you want to listen to the album from the start, all over again; m b v is that album.
-
Feb 13, 2013It’s as if they’ve recaptured innocence. It’s the only way to describe what you feel had to have happened in order for the band to preserve the very essence of what was the music of their youth, in such a way that goes beyond replication.
-
Feb 11, 2013This is a new My Bloody Valentine and it is excellent.
-
Feb 11, 2013MBV leaves all other post-rock experimentalists looking like trivial dilettantes. If jet engines could sing, these would be their hymns.
-
Feb 8, 2013m b v creates a new timeline for My Bloody Valentine, and one that recalls the past in a broader and bolder light. They’re better for it, their catalog is stronger for it, and by album’s end, they’re still the best at swirling guitars.
-
Feb 6, 2013It sounds amazing, and represents an astounding return.
-
Feb 6, 2013The songs on m b v, however, are more melodically complex, intriguing and often pleasing than anything he has written before.
-
Feb 7, 2013Twenty-two years in the making or not, this is a return that captivates, excites, and is relentless in its grab for your attention. It's the perfect comeback.
-
Feb 6, 2013My Bloody Valentine successfully followed up a decades-old classic with m b v, an album that stands as confidently, beautifully and masterfully composed as its predecessor.
-
Feb 7, 2013While m b v is a record that is more than capable of standing on its own, at the same time it also sounds exactly like the sort of thing that we might have expected My Bloody Valentine to produce two decades ago, and this noticeable lack of allegiance to the present is perhaps the most potent thing about this entire revisionist affair.
-
Feb 6, 2013You get lost in it, and if you're wired a certain way that mixture of desire and confusion is easy to map on to the wider world. For 22 years, the only way to get there was through Loveless and its associated EPs; now there's another path, one many of us never expected to find.
-
Feb 6, 2013Regardless of whether it’s an echo of the past or a bridge to the future, MBV stands as something potentially timeless--and immediately breathtaking.
-
MagnetApr 16, 2013The noise that's here is lovely, heartbreaking, expansive and raw. [No. 97, p.58]
-
Feb 21, 2013Whether approached with the utmost skepticism or the most fervent zeal, m b v proves itself not merely a reputable album, but a spectacular and unforgettable experience.
-
Feb 19, 2013A few twists and turns shy of perfection, m b v is the innovation and sonic warmth of My Bloody Valentine rekindled and made anew.
-
Feb 14, 2013You’ll be hard pressed to find another album that’s this much fun to crawl inside.
-
Feb 11, 2013Against all odds, My Bloody Valentine managed to put together an album that keeps enough of the elements that made us cherish Loveless, while stretching their sonic palette just enough to keep things interesting.
-
Feb 11, 2013It triumphs not as a continuation of a musical conversation that Isn’t Anything and Loveless began, but by forging its own distinct modern dialogue, one that at once sounds rooted in its own imaginative time and place, perhaps even dimension, with any telling outside influences dissipating as soon as the songs truly take their pleasurable hold.
-
Feb 7, 2013The legend behind m b v, as well as its songs, have created something many will talk about for much longer than it’s taken to arrive.
-
Feb 6, 2013Twenty-two years later, My Bloody Valentine is still the band everyone's talking about, and although it may not necessarily build on Loveless, there's no audible reason m b v shouldn't be spoken of in the same hushed, venerating tones.
-
Feb 6, 2013It's an album that seemingly could have come out in 1996 just as easily as today. Even the song titles feel familiar: "Only Tomorrow," "Is This and Yes," "Nothing Is." Having said that, it's lovely.
-
Feb 6, 2013It's everything its fans have been pining for the past two decades.
-
Q MagazineMar 12, 2013MBV isn't perfect; sometimes the songs do drag, but the brilliant moments are so brilliant, and the exciting moments so exciting that you'll forgive them. [Apr 2013, p.108]
-
UncutMar 1, 2013Overall, then, mbv is more of a time capsule than a box of surprises, but the contents have survived in immaculate condition. [Apr 2013, p.64]
-
The WireFeb 28, 2013MBV is a successful return. [Mar 2013, p.49]
-
Feb 12, 2013It’s obviously well-crafted and well-executed.
-
Feb 11, 2013More comforting than revelatory, M B V reaffirms that My Bloody Valentine are one of a kind; the subtlety to their melodies, instrumentation, and the way they blur together belongs to them alone.
-
Feb 11, 2013MBV is not really an album at all, but an oeuvre in fast-forward.
-
Feb 11, 2013The album’s major problem, more than anything, is that such a flabbergastingly brilliant end stretch hints at a better record that might have been, a furiously abrasive set of drum’n’gaze (sorry) that would have completely blindsided all of us, rather than the enjoyable grab bag of dreamy old and in yer face new that we in fact get.
-
Feb 11, 2013This, finally, is the stuff people have been waiting a young lifetime to hear. It more than passes muster.
-
Feb 8, 2013[The first three] tracks follow fairly seamlessly on from MBV's previous work, but thereafter subtle changes are applied that tug the album into pastures new.
-
Feb 8, 2013There's clearly something here, there's an evolution in what Shields is doing. But, is it any good? Yes. Is it better than 'Loveless'? Probably not--and it's unfair to compare it to a predecessor that we've had two decades to live with and love. Given its gestation, it perhaps suffers from being a less cohesive body of work.
-
Feb 8, 2013Despite the skull-crushing power, MBV is music that rewards close listening, music that takes its time to give up its secrets.
-
Feb 7, 2013While there’s nothing quite as disorienting and alien as Loveless’s dramatic opening song, Only Shallow, there’s notable evolution in both the songwriting and sound, and the overall flow of the album actually seems tighter.
-
Feb 7, 2013Those same multilayered textures [in Loveless] are all here, and if anything there are more finely chiselled planes of fresh variation: there is a discipline as well as wildness behind the distortion.
-
Feb 7, 2013mbv follows its predecessor without aggrandizing its past resources, and as such, delivers a wallop of sweet, sweet distortion in a way that comes naturally to them.
-
Feb 6, 2013m b v is an impressive work, one in which adventurous and nostalgic listeners alike will find something to appreciate.
-
Feb 6, 2013Like The Eternal and The Seer, m b v is a late-period return of the repressed, a middle-aged freak-out tempered by hard-won mastery.
-
Feb 6, 2013This is vivid music, with color and texture and perhaps taste.
-
Feb 6, 2013While the sound of mbv is reassuringly familiar--openers “she found now” and “only tomorrow” tread melodic paths that seem strangely familiar even as they wander--its newness is remarkable.
-
Feb 21, 2013Overwhelmingly subtle and crushingly consuming, m b v delivers beauty in the slightest shifts and drama in its calculatedly awkward movements.
-
Classic Rock MagazineJun 6, 2013MBV is no great leap forward, though it's still aeons ahead of its 21st century competition. [Apr 2013, p.98]
-
Feb 19, 2013Yes, it's a fine album.... It's during the songs that shift the focus from chaos to ethereal mirth that the listener can fairly wonder about whether this album should be judged as simply a regular new offering or an (almost) lost treasure.
-
Feb 6, 2013m b v stretches My Bloody Valentine’s sound without changing it much, and you may not be surprised to find out this is an excellent headphones record. But that’s no back-handed complement.
-
Feb 6, 2013Shields and his bandmates have made a transitional album, one that nods to the band’s storied peak but winds up heading in a new direction.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 158 out of 182
-
Mixed: 14 out of 182
-
Negative: 10 out of 182
-
Feb 8, 2013
-
Feb 7, 2013
-
Feb 6, 2013