No one would disagree with you if you thought Kevin Shields, frontman for My Bloody Valentine, was more than a little detached from reality.
Either he’s blissfully unaware that it’s been two decades since the influential Irish band have released any new material, or he accidentally travelled through time 20 years into the future and hasn’t yet worked out it’s 2012.
Or he’s just a complete bastard. Either way, Shields has claimed in a recent interview with Pitchfork that he’s been busy working on new material, as if we’re to forget that it’s been 21 years since Loveless was release.
“Not much– I need to finish it!” says Shields when asked what he can say about any new material. Shields then went on to reveal he’s been working on the material with the rest of the band and that the 2008 reunion shows inspired them back into the studio.
The band have released only two LPs in their history, 1988’s Isn’t Anything and 1991’s Loveless, both on Creation Records joining the ranks of Primal Scream, and Oasis. Loveless, which managed to reach #24 on the British charts, was for the most part a critical success but commercial failure.
In fact there are a number of reports that Creation poured so much money into recording Loveless, which took over two years, that the label was nearly bankrupt; forcing founder Alan McGee to sell half the company to Sony.
We can only assume Creation haven’t been paying for the 20 years it’s taken so far for a follow up.
“I’m just finishing a record that I had started in the 90s,” Shields continues. “It was going to be, like, the next record. But it was already after the band had half split up, and me and Bilinda [Butcher] were left. Then we got back together.”
“We never broke up, technically; I left the band for legal reasons once, I had to. But other than that, I’ve always said that we were going to make a record again. You never know, we might finish it really quickly, and it might be up in a few months! I tend to work really quickly, suddenly, and I might be willing to do that right now. We’ll see!”
