''Isn't Anything'' is the debut
studio album
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...
by Anglo-Irish
rock
Rock most often refers to:
* Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids
* Rock music, a genre of popular music
Rock or Rocks may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...
band
My Bloody Valentine, released on 21 November 1988 by
Creation Records
Creation Records Ltd. was a British independent record label founded in 1983 by Alan McGee, Dick Green, and Joe Foster. Its name came from the 1960s band The Creation, whom McGee greatly admired. The label ceased operations in 1999, although ...
. Its innovative guitar and production techniques consolidated the experimentation of the band's preceding EPs
and would make the album a pioneering work of the subgenre known as
shoegazing
Shoegaze (originally called shoegazing and sometimes conflated with "dream pop") is a subgenre of indie and alternative rock characterized by its ethereal mixture of obscured vocals, guitar distortion and effects, feedback, and overwhelming volu ...
.
Upon its release, the album received rave critical reviews and reached #1 on the
UK Independent Albums Chart
The UK Independent Singles Chart and UK Independent Albums Chart are charts of the best-selling independent singles and albums, respectively, in the United Kingdom. Originally published in January 1980, and widely known as the indie chart, the rele ...
.
Background
After the band's original vocalist Dave Conway left in 1987, replaced by
Bilinda Butcher
Bilinda Jayne Butcher (born 16 September 1961) is an English musician and singer-songwriter, best known as a vocalist and guitarist of the shoegaze band My Bloody Valentine.
Early life
Butcher was born and raised in London and later reloc ...
, the band at first continued in their previous noisy
indie-pop
Indie pop (also typeset as indie-pop or indiepop) is a music genre and subculture that combines guitar pop with DIY ethic in opposition to the style and tone of mainstream pop music. It originated from British post-punk in the late 1970s and su ...
style.
Kevin Shields
Kevin Patrick Shields (born 21 May 1963) is an American-born Irish musician, singer-songwriter, composer, and producer, best known as the vocalist and guitarist of the band My Bloody Valentine. They became influential on the evolution of alter ...
then desired to return to the band's avant-garde roots and began to explore the possibilities offered by the studio facilities available after having signed to
Creation Records
Creation Records Ltd. was a British independent record label founded in 1983 by Alan McGee, Dick Green, and Joe Foster. Its name came from the 1960s band The Creation, whom McGee greatly admired. The label ceased operations in 1999, although ...
in 1988.
The first fruit of this experimentation was the single/EP ''
You Made Me Realise
''You Made Me Realise'' is the third extended play by alternative rock band My Bloody Valentine, released on 8 August 1988 through Creation Records. It was their first record for Creation.
Sound and influences
The EP marked a change in direct ...
'', released in July 1988, with ''Isn't Anything'' following later that year.
Creation head
Alan McGee
Alan John McGee (born 29 September 1960) is a Scottish businessman and music industry executive. He has been a record label owner, musician, manager, and music blogger for ''The Guardian''. He co-founded the independent Creation Records label, r ...
recalled: "Kevin gave me 'You Made Me Realise', which was supposed to be a track on
their first EP for us. I went, That's the single! He was shocked, cos they'd only done the track as a joke. Then they did stuff for their album, and I said, Go for more of the weirder stuff. So they went back and did stuff like 'Soft as Snow'. Those are the only suggestions I've ever given them."
Most of the album was recorded in a studio in Wales
over a period of two weeks, and the band members slept about two hours a night.
Butcher described the effect of this: "Often, when we do the vocals, it's 7:30 in the morning: I've usually fallen asleep and have to be woken up to sing. Maybe that's why it's languorous. I'm usually trying to remember what I've been dreaming about when I'm singing."
Music
''
Qs
Stuart Maconie
Stuart Maconie (born 13 August 1961) is an English radio DJ and television presenter, writer, journalist, and critic working in the field of pop music and popular culture. He is currently a presenter on BBC Radio 6 Music where, alongside Mark ...
wrote that the album "was the first full-length expression of this remarkable new sound: gossamer vocals and insinuating melodies glimpsed through sheets of blurred, opaque noise."
''
Melody Maker
''Melody Maker'' was a British weekly music magazine, one of the world's earliest music weeklies; according to its publisher, IPC Media, the earliest. It was founded in 1926, largely as a magazine for dance band musicians, by Leicester-born ...
'' described its sound as "swoon-songs, oblivious, languorous vocals and out-of-focus guitars which are like being taken to the brink of consciousness and held there."
Taylor Parkes of ''
The Quietus
''The Quietus'' is a British online music and pop culture magazine founded by John Doran and Luke Turner. The site is an editorially independent publication led by Doran with a group of freelance journalists and critics.
Content
''The Quiet ...
'' described the album as "livid, lurid and lucid," and called it "the shattering racket of the moment, an audio snapshot of the overwhelmed senses, a noise like nothing you've ever heard, but everything you've ever felt."
In his book ''Alternative Rock'',
Dave Thompson described the album's sound as "dry ice-piercingly intense guitar drones and hefty nods to miasmic hardcore soup, oozing a contrary trance-spun drone. Noise becomes beauty as feedback is layered over vocals over feedback ad infinitum."
Anthony Carew of
About.com
Dotdash Meredith (formerly About.com) is an American digital media company based in New York City. The company publishes online articles and videos about various subjects across categories including health, home, food, finance, tech, beauty, ...
described its style as "atonal, desconstructed, free-noise guitar playing" and noted that it had an "ethereal, spectral quality that radically reconfigured the predominant paradigms of rock'n'roll."
"Several Girls Galore" has been described as "a
cubist
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
take on
the Jesus and Mary Chain
The Jesus and Mary Chain are a Scottish alternative rock band formed in East Kilbride in 1983. The band revolves around the songwriting partnership of brothers Jim and William Reid. After signing to independent label Creation Records, they rele ...
."
Release
''Isn't Anything'' was released in the United Kingdom on 21 November 1988 by
Creation Records
Creation Records Ltd. was a British independent record label founded in 1983 by Alan McGee, Dick Green, and Joe Foster. Its name came from the 1960s band The Creation, whom McGee greatly admired. The label ceased operations in 1999, although ...
. A limited edition of the first 5,000 vinyl copies included a bonus seven-inch single featuring two instrumental tracks, both titled "
Instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to instru ...
". The
B-side
The A-side and B-side are the two sides of phonograph records and cassettes; these terms have often been printed on the labels of two-sided music recordings. The A-side usually features a recording that its artist, producer, or record compan ...
track featured a
Public Enemy
"Public enemy" is a term which was first widely used in the United States in the 1930s to describe individuals whose activities were seen as criminal and extremely damaging to society, though the phrase had been used for centuries to describe p ...
drum loop from "Security of the First World."
In the United States, the album was released by
Relativity Records
Relativity Records was an American record label founded by Barry Kobrin at the site of his company, Important Record Distributors (IRD) in metro New York. Relativity released music that covers a wide variety of musical genres. When it entered in ...
, with international distribution handled by
Sire Records
Sire Records (formerly Sire Records Company) is an American record label owned by Warner Music Group and distributed by Warner Records.
History Beginnings
The label was founded in 1966 as Sire Productions by Seymour Stein and Richard Gottehrer ...
in Canada,
Virgin Records
Virgin Records is a record label owned by Universal Music Group. It originally founded as a British independent record label in 1972 by entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman. It grew to be a worldwid ...
in France,
Rough Trade Records
Rough Trade Records is an independent record label based in London, England. It was formed in 1976 by Geoff Travis who had opened a record store off Ladbroke Grove. Having successfully promoted and sold records by punk rock and early post-pun ...
in Germany and Stiletto Records in Brazil. ''Isn't Anything''s lead single "
Feed Me with Your Kiss
"Feed Me with Your Kiss" is a song by the alternative rock band My Bloody Valentine, and was released as a single and also the lead track to the EP of the same name through Creation Records. It is the seventh track and lead single from the band's ...
" was released in October 1988, backed with three outtakes from the album's recording sessions: "I Believe", "Emptiness Inside" and "I Need No Trust". "Soft as Snow (But Warm Inside)" was also released as a
promotional single
A promotional recording, or promo, or plug copy, is an audio or video recording distributed free, usually in order to promote a recording that is or soon will be commercially available. Promos are normally sent directly to broadcasters, such as ...
in the United States in December 1988. Neither of the album's retail singles charted.
The album was reissued on CD by
Warner Bros. Records
Warner Records Inc. (formerly Warner Bros. Records Inc.) is an American record label. A subsidiary of the Warner Music Group, it is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. It was founded on March 19, 1958, as the recorded music division of the ...
in 1993 and 2001 and by Creation in 1996.
A 180-gram LP version of the album was released by Plain Records in 2008, and a remastered version of the album was released in June 2008. An additional remaster by Shields at
Metropolis Studios
Metropolis Studios is a music production and entertainment industry company established in 1989 by Gary Langan, Carey Taylor and Karin Clayton.Donald Brackett It is located in the Powerhouse, a Grade II listed building, at 70 Chiswick High Ro ...
in London was released on 4 May 2012.
Reception
Upon its release, ''Isn't Anything'' received acclaim from critics. "If ''Isn't Anything'' had been made by Americans", wrote ''
NME
''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...
'' reviewer Jack Barron, "My Bloody Valentine would be greeted as the new messiahs of dreamrock guitar."
A 1988 year-end roundup of the year's top albums in ''
Melody Maker
''Melody Maker'' was a British weekly music magazine, one of the world's earliest music weeklies; according to its publisher, IPC Media, the earliest. It was founded in 1926, largely as a magazine for dance band musicians, by Leicester-born ...
'' ranked ''Isn't Anything'' third of the year and called it "a raving nymphomania and out-of-body experience
hat
A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...
establishes them as absent-minded rulers of this daydream nation."
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...
editor Heather Phares referred to ''Isn't Anything'' as "the most lucid, expansive articulation yet of the group's sound" and said the album "captures My Bloody Valentine's revolutionary style in its infancy and points the way to ''
Loveless'', but it's far more than just a dress rehearsal for the band's moment of greatness."
''
Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cul ...
'' reviewer
Ken Tucker
Kenneth Tucker is an American arts, music and television critic, magazine editor, and non-fiction book writer.
Early life and education
Tucker was born in Manhattan, New York City, New York, and raised in Stamford, Connecticut. He earned a ...
reflected on ''Isn't Anything'' in 1993, saying "the passion of their playing – the rafter-shaking guitar chords, the baleful vocals – attests to their faith in romance, betrayal, and dizzy crushes. They nearly bury their somber melodies beneath
surface noise
In sound and music production, sonic artifact, or simply artifact, refers to sonic material that is accidental or unwanted, resulting from the editing or manipulation of a sound.
Types
Because there are always technical restrictions in the way a ...
. But unearthing the tunes is part of the listening pleasure."
The remasters of ''Isn't Anything'' also generated favourable reviews. ''
Uncut
Uncut may refer to:
* ''Uncut'' (film), a 1997 Canadian docudrama film by John Greyson about censorship
* ''Uncut'' (magazine), a monthly British magazine with a focus on music, which began publishing in May 1997
* '' BET: Uncut'', a Black Enter ...
''s Stephen Troussé wrote: "
rock algebra you might deduce that they'd worked out some new equation involving the barbed languor of
the Mary Chain, the speedfreak urgency of
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth was an American rock band based in New York City, formed in 1981. Founding members Thurston Moore (guitar, vocals), Kim Gordon (bass, vocals, guitar) and Lee Ranaldo (guitar, vocals) remained together for the entire history of the b ...
, and a dash of
The Vaselines
The Vaselines are a Scottish alternative rock band. Formed in Glasgow, Scotland in 1986, the band was originally a duo between its songwriters Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee, but later added James Seenan and Eugene's brother Charlie Kelly on ba ...
' sauce – but none of that accounts for the savagely sensual results."
''Isn't Anything'' is regarded by many as among the greatest albums of the 1980s. The album has been included in ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
''s list of 1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die and ranked at #16 in their Alternative Top 100 Albums list. The album was also ranked #24 in ''
The Irish Times
''The Irish Times'' is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper and online digital publication. It launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Ruadhán Mac Cormaic. It is published every day except Sundays. ''The Irish Times'' is considered a newspaper ...
'' list of Top 40 Irish Albums of All Time, selected by ''
Pitchfork
A pitchfork (also a hay fork) is an agricultural tool with a long handle and two to five tines used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves.
The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to th ...
'' staff as #22 on their "Top 100 Albums of the 1980s" list and listed at #92 on ''
Slant Magazine
''Slant Magazine'' is an American online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York ...
''s list of Best Albums of the 1980s. ''Uncut'' writer
David Stubbs
David Stubbs (born 13 September 1962 in London) is a British music journalist. He grew up in Leeds and in the early Eighties was a student at the University of Oxford where he was a close friend of Simon Reynolds. The two were part of the Oxfor ...
has called ''Isn't Anything'' "one of the most important, influential British rock albums of the eighties."
In its 2013 update, the ''NME'' ranked the album at 187 in the list of
The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
"The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" is a recurring opinion survey and music ranking of the finest albums in history, compiled by the American magazine ''Rolling Stone''. It is based on weighted votes from selected musicians, critics, and indust ...
. ''Pitchfork'' selected the album as the fourth-best shoegaze album of all time.
Track listing
Personnel
All personnel credits adapted from ''Isn't Anything''s liner notes.
;My Bloody Valentine
*
Kevin Shields
Kevin Patrick Shields (born 21 May 1963) is an American-born Irish musician, singer-songwriter, composer, and producer, best known as the vocalist and guitarist of the band My Bloody Valentine. They became influential on the evolution of alter ...
– guitar, vocals
*
Bilinda Butcher
Bilinda Jayne Butcher (born 16 September 1961) is an English musician and singer-songwriter, best known as a vocalist and guitarist of the shoegaze band My Bloody Valentine.
Early life
Butcher was born and raised in London and later reloc ...
– guitar, vocals
*
Colm Ó Cíosóig
Colm Ó Cíosóig (; born 31 October 1964) is an Irish musician, best known as the drummer for the alternative rock band My Bloody Valentine, of which he was a founding member.
Biography My Bloody Valentine
Originally formed in 1983, My Blood ...
– drums
*
Deb Googe – bass
;Technical personnel
*My Bloody Valentine –
production
Production may refer to:
Economics and business
* Production (economics)
* Production, the act of manufacturing goods
* Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services)
* Production as a stati ...
*
Dave Anderson –
engineering
Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...
*Steve Nunn – engineering
*Alex Russell – engineering
*
Joe Dilworth
Stereolab are an Anglo- French avant-pop band formed in London in 1990. Led by the songwriting team of Tim Gane and Lætitia Sadier, the group's music combines influences from krautrock, lounge and 1960s pop music, often incorporating a repeti ...
–
photography
Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed ...
Chart positions
References
{{Authority control
1988 debut albums
My Bloody Valentine (band) albums
Sire Records albums
Creation Records albums