From
the Dallas Observer:"Kevin Shields, frontman of the critically beloved dreamy noise-pop band My Bloody Valentine, sees his band's recent return to active status a bit differently
than those of us on the outside. Then again, considering his vague and occasionally contradictory statements about the band, it's hard to say just how
he sees anything. When he announced in 2007 that the band would get back together again for the first time since 1992, fans and critics rejoiced at what
looked for all intents and purposes to be a reunion. But Shields doesn't see it that way. He maintains that over the years he and the others had remained
friends and still saw each other frequently, despite Ó Cíosóig's move to America (where he collaborates with Mazzy Star singer Hope Sandoval in the Warm
Inventions). Rather, it's a do-over on the Loveless tour. This time, though, the band bought all the amps it couldn't afford on the 20,000-pound budget
that hampered its last world tour. "When we finished last time we played live in '92, we didn't think that would be our last gig," he says by phone from
a Hollywood hotel between rehearsals for the band's Coachella performance and subsequent U.S. tour. "The great thing is playing together, we're just doing
it the way we were planning to do it at the time, except with the right equipment and the right sounds. The first time round, it wasn't quite right. This
time, basically we just did it right. "For us, it didn't feel like a reunion so much as like we finally managed to do it the way we wanted to back then.
It was kind of expensive, but it was really worth it because we finally got what we said we were going to do. It just took a hell of a lot longer than
we thought it would ever take." As highly anticipated as this Loveless World Tour, Take Two may be, it will be short-lived. The shows scheduled through
August will be the last by the band in its current incarnation, he says. "After the end of August, we'll have a radical change," he says. Just what that
change means, though, isn't so clear. "Everything," he elaborates. "Lineup, we might expand a bit. In that respect, we'll add another member to the group,
just to do more stuff. And sound-wise, absolutely. You know, it'll be..." He stammers for a moment, hesitates, then sighs before concluding, "Taking a
different approach." But despite this maddening vagueness about both the forthcoming album and what the band will do after the Loveless follow-up, details
emerge that make the idea of a new MBV album feel tantalizingly concrete. The bulk of its 11 tracks were recorded in 1996, along with one track from 1993
and one new recording of a song he wrote during that time period but never got around to playing. The band tried to finish recording it at the beginning
of the year but, as one would expect from the chronically tardy band, did not. They'll try again in June and July and hope to track it up by the end of
the year, he says. They might play some of the 13- to 16-year-old "new" songs on the upcoming U.S. tour, depending on how they sound in rehearsals. The
new songs are more melodic but less poppy, he says, with more elongated chord progressions--seven or eight chords per verse, as opposed to the three- or
four-chord verses of their early'90s material. "It's a bit more expansive, I suppose," he says. Once they've got those songs recorded, the band will stop
dealing with the past and start with a clean slate, he says. What that will entail, he has no idea. As much time as he's spent listening to music since
last writing for MBV, he's hard-pressed to say what will influence the band's future. The one common thread he has found in the hours and hours of music
he has recorded since Loveless is classic American popular music, such as the songwriting of pre-'60s musical craftsmen like George Gershwin, Jerry Leiber
and Mike Stoller. That, and the tapes of old blues that Primal Scream singer Bobby Gillespie would play after gigs. "That style of folk-blues music, I
would say is weirdly enough like Loveless," he says. "That style of songwriting, where you have the verses and then the instrumental breaks. I suppose,
if I were to say there's any kind of music in the world that feels really natural to me, it's that kind. Not just folk-blues, but folk music in general.
"I go through phases where I'm really into something for a few months or a year, then I don't really listen to it for years. I couldn't really say anything
in particular [that will influence future MBV music]. The smallest things have the biggest influences on me sometimes. I'll see something on television,
or hear something, and I'll just have this moment of realization that stays with me forever. And it really is something that happens in a few seconds,
and has a massive impact.""
