I’ve been reading some of the reviews about the new MBV release.  Almost every review/reviewer has been completely full of shit.  It’s like a hipster vocabulary orgy with each critic spewing out pages of Roget’s Thesaurus to describe the either sublime, beautiful or pungent songs that have been unveiled by Kevin Shields.  And each critic is so busy trying to sound clever that in the end, they’re failing at doing the one thing that they’re supposed to be doing…reviewing the material!

Here’s a snippet from a good review on NME: “hazy guitars slide in and out of focus to create a soft, dream-like fuzz, augmented by the occasional slither of bell-clear soloing that rings through the haze and Shields’ cotton-candy soft vocals adding to the envelope of sound.”

What the fuck is he talking about?  It sounds like he’s describing a night in Eli Roth’s Hostel.  Idiot.  And he never says whether the song is good or not.  Basically all we learned from his review is that the song makes noise with guitars.  And Kevin Shields might sing on it…or give out Halloween candy. I can’t tell.

Here’s a review from Spin, from someone who didn’t love the new album:  Kevin Shields bats us first left and then right with each bend of the guitar, lifts us up or pushes and holds us down, toys with us like we’re a ball of yarn and the God of All Sonics is a small kitten with a capricious whim, a dark mien and a mind like a diamond.

Again…what in the fuck fuck are you talking about?  Kittens, yarn, Gods of Chow mein?  These reviews are about as helpful as Stevie Wonder giving driving directions.

You want to know how I learned how they felt about the album…by the numerical grade at the end of the review.  Not by the review itself.

Here’s my review of the album:  “It’s good.  It sounds like a more mature Loveless.  8/10.”  That’s a review.  And that’s as long as it needs to be.  All people want to know is should they buy it or forget it.  That’s all.  They don’t care that you went to some Ivy league school and the only job you could get was getting paid $25 per album review.  It’s a music review…not scripture.

Enough about MBV’s surprise release…and time to discuss another return of another seminal shoegazer band.  This week, Ride has released the remastered versions of the remainder of their catalog.

Here are the 11 Best Songs By Ride:

1. Dreams Burn Down (Nowhere)
2. Chrome Waves (Going Blank Again)
3. Moonlight Medicine (Carnival of Light)
4. Seagull (Nowhere)
5. Kaleidoscope (Nowhere)
6. Nowhere (Nowhere)
7. From Time To Time (Carnival of Light)
8. Time Machine (Going Blank Again)
9. Ride The Wind (Tarantula)
10. Unfamiliar (Nowhere)
11. Like A Daydream (Smile)