An ugly duckling matures gracefully

Barely a month goes by without some rock journalist from Mojo or Uncut mentioning MBV’s ‘Loveless’ and saying that it is the best album of its era or genre, but hardly anybody ever mentions ‘Isn’t anything’. Shortly after buying ‘Loveless ‘ in 1992, I proclaimed it a work of genius and set about acquiring everything that MBV had previously recorded. I suspect that a lot people’s record collections evolve in this way, in my case there a lots of bands who’s albums I meant to buy but didn’t ever quite get around to it which accounts for a number of odd albums.

Collecting MBV records was pretty easy as there aren’t too many of them and with stunning singles like ‘You made me realise’, it was a fruitful pastime. However, when I bought ‘Isn’t anything’, and hurried home to play it, I can honestly say that I was disappointed. I’m not sure it was that I was expecting to hear, as lets face it, most of ‘Loveless’ takes a few plays to penetrate the distortion and acknowledge the tune amongst the cacophony.

‘Isn’t anything’, seemed like too much distortion to penetrate and didn’t seem to offer the hidden hook lines like its successor. So like many other albums that didn’t meet expectation, I put it with all of my other CD’s and forgot about it.

A few years later, and after acquiring two kids and a mortgage, I found that I still had a thirst for records but no money to spend. A logical thing to do was to play all of the records that I had never got around to playing. This of course included ‘Isn’t anything’. I found that one or two tracks were quite good after four or five plays. Then I must have got some money and bought some new stuff and ‘Isn’t Anything’ was again left to gather dust for a few years.

It wasn’t until having the flu in 2004 and being virtually housebound that I decided to give the album another chance as I couldn’t get out to buy anything new. My thirst for new records again drove me back to it. In certain respects, it became more difficult to play as my partner and kids hated it. It was then that it all began to make sense and come together and became a truly enjoyable experience as opposed to a chore to play it. I had changed my mind about this record.

It was no longer an impenetrable drone of distortion but the best thrash and arguably amongst the most sophisticated in my collection. I would recommend anybody to play ‘When you wake (you’re still in a dream)’ at maximum volume 6 or 7 times to  attempt to get the true measure of this album.

Kevin Sheilds remains a character of huge intrigue like a latter day Syd Barrett in how he has evaded the media, lived a reclusive life and took over 10 years to re-enter a studio. Persuaded by Sophie Copola, he returned for the soundtrack of ‘Lost in Translation’ and didn’t disappoint. His masterpiece, ‘Loveless’, will be celebrated for years to come but it is worth bearing in mind that ‘Isn’t anything’ is a fairly interesting album too.

Dig Dog