MY BLOODY VALENTINE LIVE IN MANCHESTER: SHOEGAZE ICONS MAKE MAGNIFICENT RETURN

On a cold Monday evening at Manchester’s Aviva Studios, the room fills with pink. It’s a colour so synonymous with My Bloody Valentine, they could sell it as a Dulux paint shade. Mention the candied cherry-lips hue to any fan or music lover, and My Bloody Valentine’s second studio album, Loveless, released 33 years ago, springs to mind. Pink spills between pedals and amplifiers, it pools on the floor, and swirls over the bleach-dyed roots and flushed cheeks of long-haired shoegazers. The Dublin-formed noise alchemists finally arrive on stage, folding everyone into a plush, sonic womb before they even strum a guitar.

Staff hand out earplugs on the street during bag checks, long before stepping into the venue —a sure sign, or warning, of how loud the gig will be.  The night erupts with ‘I Only Said’, a baggy, 90s kaleidoscopic haze, loaded with acidic major chords and a grooving bassline that plods along like a drug-induced stroll on a warm summer’s day. Aviva Studios feels like the right fit for a My Bloody Valentine gig: a large, vacant warehouse, industrial and Ikea-like, sending whirring guitars bouncing off the walls, colliding headlong with concussive force.  Each song in the setlist ends with a final scratching glug on Kevin Shield’s signature Fender Jazzmaster before hurtling full-speed into the next, a few words spoken in between. 

My Bloody Valentine have been dismantling the physics of guitar music since their debut release, Isn’t Anything, and the four-piece still live up to their reputation with chaos-induced cacophony. ‘You Never Should’ explodes as guitars spiral into a gust of feedback and drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig stomps the centre stage, snare snapping like artillery fire. Behind the band, projections of shadowed birds blend into bending cityscapes, but the audience hardly notices, heads buried and fixed on scuffed Converse during ‘Only Shallow’.

“Mani used to like this song,” Kevin Shields says halfway through the set for ‘Soon’, paying tribute to the late Stone Roses bassist and Mancunian music hero who passed away earlier this week. It’s a sweet, heartwarming tribute that the crowd appreciates with a raucous of cheers and applause. The rest of the band follows into their trippiest, most acid-soaked track, its jumpy, danceable riff crashing through Bilinda Butcher’s choral, modulated vocals. Midway, the song vanishes due to technical difficulties, swallowed by a blackened hush, only for the band to drag and rescusitate it back into existence. My Bloody Valentine are the ultimate noise-rock veterans, and tonight, they certainly give the impression they have wrestled with many nuclear-blown amps over the years to keep them from being startled.  As they restart, it’s easy to hear why Mani would have liked it: ‘Soon’ shimmers with Madchester, MDMA-fuelled charm, its warped glitchy drum intro echoing the loose bounce of Happy Mondays or the Stone Roses. It wobbles just enough to get you moving.

Kevin Shields’s perfectionism had kept the band in near-mythical silence for years before, making their 2013 return with m b v feel like a long-awaited dream come true for fans. Highlights from that album stun live, with ‘New You’ drifting across the room in dizzying tremolo and suspended chords. The night closes with the discordant rarity ‘You Made Me Realise’, a fuzzy onslaught of noise that no one could survive without earplugs, feisty breakbeats whipping through the room and guitars spiralling into distortion. It plays out more like an atmospheric metal band than any genre the band is usually associated with.

This evening, My Bloody Valentine are at their sharpest and most assured. Kevin calls out to the crowd: “Any questions?” Several voices shout back in unison: “When is the new album?” Decades after their first releases, My Bloody Valentine remain titans of sound. Their live performances retain an almost ritualistic mystique, offering a rare glimpse into a world defined by both intensity and nuance. It leaves you wondering, as always, what comes next. So, really: when is the new album?