Album: My Bloody Valentine, Loveless (Sony BMG)

Gigs aside, for Kevin Shields to make his comeback not with the third My Bloody Valentine album he's promised for 17 years but a reissue of the last one, remastered to little purpose, is only fitting.

For a band associated with ear-blowing volume, they perfected ennui as energy. You can hear it all on Loveless, which famously all but bank-rupted Creation Records in its long gestation. Though taking from the Velvet Underground and the Cocteau Twins, and sharing values of serrated prettiness with contemporaries as varied as the Jesus and Mary Chain and Teenage Fanclub, this still sounds like a unique monument to slowness and absence.

On "To Here Knows When", Shields's woozy guitar chords buzz round Bilinda Butcher's swooning voice until she's lost in the thickening swirl. You can feel a hesitant firming of the music during "Come Alone", as Shields picks out a clean, conventional solo. Silence since has exaggerated Loveless's status, but it hasn't been bettered.

Pick of the album:'Sometimes', 'Come Alone', 'Blown a Wish'

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