First night: My Bloody Valentine - MBV

So last night, then, Kevin Shields hit 'send', or possibly 'return', or issued an instruction to release the babies, and all of sudden, we had a new My Bloody Valentine album.



Squee, as I believe they say.

What is the world making of it?

Caspar Llewellyn Smith doesn't want to rush to judgement:

We should honour Shields and co by not rushing this, and publish the real review of the album in 2035.

Just kidding! Of course he wants first dibs on a review:

so, yes, very, very early impressions: it's not a great leap forwards – it sounds not so much as a continuation of Loveless but a record completely akin to it ... although you can hear the vocals and instruments in the mix more clearly; and the closing track, Wonder 2, is that hallucinatory drum and bass tune Shields once suggested he'd gone and recorded. If that had come out in the mid-90s, the Britpop boys would have all taken their Beatles songbooks and gone home crying.

Must be exciting for the NME, though? A new record by a legendary band, and them with a shiny website ready for a first impression review. Right?

Er, no. They scrape together a tracklisting, but their blogs - presumably the best place to stick a quick response - is leading on something about Elton John wearing funny hats. (That might make it sound like NME haven't updated the blogs since about 1976.)

The LA Times seemed willing to have a go at a review, but struggled with technology and fact:

[Updated Feb. 2 at 7:27 p.m.: An earlier version of this post misidentified My Bloody Valentine as British. The band was actually formed in Dublin, Ireland. Also, as of late Saturday, the new My Bloody Valentine album reportedly is available at the above website. However, the site remains crashed as of this writing, possibly due to a crush of visitors. We'll update as we hear more -- good luck, everyone.]

The Mirror threw the ball to its readers:

Are you excited about m b v? Leave your comments below

This 'write your own review' approach hasn't yet got a single taker.

Peter Paphides' review is acute on the process of release:

Slowly but surely, something about this “sudden release” business is becoming clear. It won’t be for every artist. Young bands seeking to establish themselves have little to gain from springing new works onto an unsuspecting world. Neither will it work for your journeyman rocker who puts out a similar record to the last one every two years, seemingly untroubled by its sonic proximity to the last one. For artists who have had trouble dealing with the expectations of their audience, however, this might be the best way. Screw the build-up. What is the “build-up” anyway? Isn’t that the bit between the announcement of the release date and the release itself? The bit where we all talk about how much we loved the earlier records and, by doing so, place impossibly high expectations on music we simply haven’t had a chance to get nostalgic about?

Gideon Coe is excited:

That's a record worth listening to again and again. Several times today to start with.Beautiful. Any chance of another? No hurry. #MBV

— Gideon Coe (@gidcoe) February 3, 2013

But perhaps Beach House have it right, though:

Don't read what anyone is writing/going to write, just listen to the new #mbv record without some idiot clouding your thoughts

— Beach House (@BeaccchHoussse) February 3, 2013