Loveless (album) - Release and Reception

Release and Reception

Following the album's low budget release, Shields boasted, "We know more about how the record industry works than our record company half the time. We do. I'm not joking." That winter the band toured Europe, an event music critic David Cavanagh described as a "unique chapter in live music". To recreate the higher tones from Loveless, Shields employed American flautist Anna Quimby. According to a friend of the band, "She had a little skirt on, black tights...she was a little indie girl. But when she blew into the flute, it was like fucking Woodstock". NME editor Danny Kelly attended a show he described as "more like torture than entertainment, I had a half pint of lager; they hit their first note and it was so loud that it sent the glass hurtling". A U.S. spring tour followed, during which Shields and Butcher tested their audiences' ability to sustain noise played at high volumes. Critic Mark Kemp said of the American tour, "After about thirty seconds the adrenaline set in, people are screaming and shaking their fists. After a minute you wonder what's going on. After another minute it's total confusion. The noise starts hurting. The noise continues. After three minutes you begin to take deep breaths. After four minutes, a calm takes over." The tour saw My Bloody Valentine accused of criminal negligence by the music press, who took exception to the long period of extreme noise played during You Made Me Realise, referring to it as "the holocaust". In December 2000 Mojo magazine rated the tour as the second loudest in history.

Although Shields feared a critical panning, reviews of Loveless were almost unanimous with praise. NME awarded the album an eight out of ten score. Reviewer Dele Fadele saw My Bloody Valentine as the "blueprint" for the shoegaze genre, and wrote: "with 'Loveless' you could've expected the Irish / English partnership to succumb to self-parody or mimic The Scene That's Delighted To Eat Quiche But no, 'Loveless' fires a silver-coated bullet into the future, daring all-comers to try and recreate its mixture of moods, feelings, emotion, styles and, yes, innovations." While Fadele expressed some disappointment that the group seemed to disassociate themselves from dance music and reggae basslines, he concluded "'Loveless' ups the ante, and, however decadent one might find the idea of elevating other human beings to deities, My Bloody Valentine, failings and all, deserve more than your respect." Melody Maker writer Simon Reynolds praised the album, and wrote that Loveless " how unique, how peerless MBV are." He declared, "Along with Mercury Rev's 'Yerself is Steam', 'Loveless' is the outermost, innermost, uttermost rock record of 1991." Reynolds noted that his only criticism was that "while My Bloody Valentine have amplified and refined what they already were, they've failed to mutate or leap into any kind of beyond." Rolling Stone gave the album four out of five stars. In a review that also covered Chapterhouse and Creation labelmates Velvet Crush, reviewer Ira Robbins wrote, "Despite the record's intense ability to disorient—this is real do-not-adjust-your-set stuff—the effect is strangely uplifting. Loveless oozes a sonic balm that first embraces and then softly pulverizes the frantic stress of life." Spin gave Loveless a mixed review with writer Jim Greer noting that the album's songs are "standard-sh and dull" and concluded that he felt "The warped music is a cool idea and I recommend the album—but not on the basis of the singing or the songs".

While Creation were pleased with the final album, and the initial music press reviews were positive, the label soon realised that although, in the words of plugger James Kyllo, "it was such a beautiful record, and it was wonderful to have it... it just didn't sound like a record that was going to recoup all the money that had been spent on it." Alan McGee liked the record, but admitted, "It was quite clear that we couldn't bear the idea of going through that again, because there was just nothing to say that wouldn't do exactly the same again. That's enough. Lets step back". Despite a severe shortage of money, Creation funded a short tour of the north of England late in 1991. At the time the band were making the marketing of Loveless difficult—there would be no singles, and the band's name was forbidden to appear on the record sleeve. McGee was by now exhausted and frustrated. He recalled, "I thought: I went to the wall for you. If this record bombs, I've stolen my father's money. And they were so...not understanding of anybody else's position." McGee dropped My Bloody Valentine from Creation soon after the album's release because he could not bear working with Shields again; "It was either him or me", he told The Guardian in 2004. Loveless peaked at number 24 on the UK Albums Chart, and failed to chart in the United States, where it was distributed by Sire Records. In 2003 Rolling Stone estimated the sales figures for Loveless as 225,000 copies sold.

Loveless has ranked highly on a number of critics' lists. The album ranked number fourteen in the 1991 Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics' poll. In 1999, Pitchfork Media named Loveless the best album of the 1990s. However, in their 2003 revision of the list, it moved to number two, swapping places with Radiohead's OK Computer. In 2003, the album was ranked number 219 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2004 The Observer ranked it at number 20 in its "100 Greatest British Albums" list, declaring it "the last great extreme rock album". In Spin's entry for Loveless on its list of "100 Greatest Albums 1985-2005" (where it was ranked at number 22), Chuck Klosterman wrote, "Whenever anyone uses the phrase swirling guitars, this record is why. A testament to studio production and single-minded perfectionism, Loveless has a layered, inverted thickness that makes harsh sounds soft and fragile moments vast." In 2008 Loveless topped The Irish Times' "Greatest Irish Album" list.