My Bloody Valentine - m b v

The Independent“Nobody else sounds like this...” mbv is irreducible to mere instalments. A substance unto itself, it's a deliciously hypnagogic miasma of softly whispered vocals, pummelling looped grooves and Shields' trademark "glide guitar"...

MusicOMH“God knows how these will sound live....” Is This and Yes takes m b v into its own territory, presenting a surprisingly calming, sedate side to MBV never heard before: sparse and twinkling-sounding layered organ, muted tom beats, like something reminiscent of later Stereolab....

Drowned In Sound“For the most part, it’s a splendid album...” Perhaps the biggest problem with the album’s extremely likeable first two thirds, is that its comparable cosiness is indisputably eclipsed by the extraordinary trio of songs that close m b v...

The Telegraph“Those multilayered textures are all here...” There is a discipline as well as wildness behind the distortion. But this is still a vinyl record trapped on a computer hard drive, and as such, is like playing it while undergoing an MRI scan...

The Observer“Reminds you what a perverse talent Shields is...” This, finally, is the stuff people have been waiting a young lifetime to hear. It more than passes muster. More than that, mbv takes hold of your battered, puny Eustachian tubes and redefines which way is up...

The Line of Best Fit“There is assuredly no road map for this type of musical journey...” It triumphs not as a continuation of a musical conversation that Isn’t Anything and Loveless began, but by forging its own distinct modern dialogue, one that at once sounds rooted in its own imaginative time and place...

BBC“An astounding return...” Strip away the two-decade ‘delay’ and it’s a perfect follow-up to Loveless. It’s an album that 22 years of speculation and analysis haven’t come close to matching the reality of...

Guardian“A kind of aural equivalent of the way you feel just before you faint...” The songs on m b v are more melodically complex, intriguing and often pleasing than anything he has written before. The tunes and chord progressions keep slipping their moorings and heading down unexpected paths...

Pitchfork“An album of density with very little air or light...” There's a rush of feeling inside their music so intense it creates a kind of paralysis. Music swirls and moves in and out of phase, voices float by, half memory and half anticipation, and you're never quite sure how all the parts fit together...