Soulless nostalgia for the early 90s is everywhere this year. A cursory look at summer festival lineups will confirm this, with bands like Pearl Jam, Jane’s Addiction, Beastie Boys, Nine Inch Nails, The Flaming Lips and others who came to prominence by 1993 at the absolute latest dominating headlining slots almost everywhere. For the most part, people won’t be there to hear new music as much as they will be to hear songs they’ve had the better part of two decades to come to love, and the cheers that will follow one guitar chord or one drumbeat will confirm this.  

I’m guilty of this, too. My Bloody Valentine’s reunion tour featured absolutely no new music, no commentary from the band beyond frontman Kevin Shields’ seemingly biannual statements about finishing his nearly fifteen-years delayed followup to 1991’s Loveless, and not even a new photograph of the band to replace their old press materials, when they were likely all much thinner. But I saw My Bloody Valentine, who I’m willing to call the defining guitar band of the last twenty years, knowing all of this, and I don’t regret it.

At first I was wary. Their Seattle show, billed as their first in the city in 17 years, was woefully undersold, with the cavernous WaMu Theater looking at most half-full, and   opening act Brightblack Morning Light’s stoned jams were lost in a sea of echo and an inability to project in a space much larger than their usual venues. Lilys frontman K. Heasley appeared unannounced and bored us all for a solid 40 minutes with acoustic singer-songwriter stuff as far removed from what we’d come to see as humanly possible. We weren’t happy.

All was forgiven as soon as My Bloody Valentine arrived. Signs around the theater advertised the fact that the show was going to be “extremely loud” and staffers handed out earplugs so as to discourage lawsuits, and I can comfortably say that there is no listening experience like MBV’s live performance; the band creates a wall of high-frequency noise that consumes everything around it, and its power is undeniable.  

Drummer Colm O’Ciosoig and bassist Deb Googe hammered at their instruments, proving themselves to be one of the most intense rhythm sections I’ve ever heard, but Kevin Shields and Bilinda Butcher, who were almost inanimate, were stunning; I was left utterly transfixed as soon as “I Only Said” blared through the band’s two-PA setup, and things simply got louder from there. The set, as it did 17 years ago, ended with “You Made Me Realize,” which erupted into a twenty-minute solo in which every band member played one note or chord at upwards of 130 decibels. I felt it in my throat and in my chest, I felt my clothes blow backwards, and my eyes rolled back in my head, leaving me nearly hypnotized; it was emotionally exhausting, horrifying and the single most memorable experience I’ve ever had watching live music. Most striking was the fact that the band returned exactly in the song to where they left off, then finished it and quietly left. No one even thought about the possibility of an encore; I was too busy trying to figure out why it was that everything around me, like running water, cars and footsteps all resembled guitar feedback.