release date: Nov. 21, 1988
format: cd / cd (2012 remaster)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,66]
producer: My Bloody Valentine
label: Creation Records / Sony Music - nationality: Ireland
Track highlights: 1. "Soft As Snow (But Warm Inside)" - 2. "Lose My Breath" - 3. "Cupid Come" - 4. "(When You Wake) You're Still in a Dream" - 6. "All I Need" - 7. "Feed Me With Your Kiss" (4 / 5) - 8. "Sueisfine" - 10. "You Never Should" - 12. "I Can See It (But I Can't Feel It)"
Full-length studio album debut by My Bloody Valentine and the band's first on Creation.
The album was the second that I heard with the band after listening to their epic Loveless (1991). Despite being officially an Irish band, American Kevin Shields (guitarist, vocalist, composer) is the band's mastermind. He created most of the material on this album, either alone (six tracks) or with help from drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig or together with vocalist & guitarist Bilinda Butcher, and in retrospect Shield is near synonymous with the band name. Prior to this, the band released a number of singles and eps without bassist Debbie Googe and especially also without Bilinda Butcher who contributed in shaping their iconic sound from around 1987 when former vocalist Dave Conway left the band. So what lies before '87 is basically music from what sounds like another band, and with Isn't Anything they initiate a style that many bands and artists copied in the early nineties, which may be referred to as noise pop, shoegaze, and dream pop, and which much later led other artists (e.g. Mogwai, Sigur Rós) to exercise into post-rock.
Only in recent years, I have come across their mini-album debut, This Is Your Bloody Valentine (1985), which really seems far from the style on this and their earliest releases with focus on post-punk, gothic rock, and psychobilly. I recall that Robert Smith (The Cure) in the late 1980s referred to this band as one of his new favourites - and I often wondered if he had heard the style they came to abandon or the style that should become their trademark.
Isn't Anything is not as great as the iconic '91 album but it surely points in that direction - especially tracks #1, 4 and 7. Back in the 90s, I never really enjoyed this all that much, but I do understand its significance as a cornerstone in music history. Maybe, it's great music for background noise when painting or being in a creative process that involves craftsmanship with your hands instead of work that is dependent on more relaxed thinking processes. Anyway, I don't think the album is easy to let in with it's unusual compositions build on walls of heavy distorted guitars, but if you're capable of seeing it as complex music with another purpose than just echoing nice poetic chorus lines in your head, it may appeal to you. The album seems like caught between British indie pop, which was what Creation Records traditionally released at the time, and a much more unique sound of noise pop echoing Sonic Youth and primarily originating in the US, and which in any case had its roots in the post-punk movement. The album is enlisted in "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die".
[ allmusic.com, Drowned in Sound 4,5 / 5, Q Magazine 4 / 5 stars ]
