“Only Shallow” by My Bloody Valentine

Loveless, My Bloody Valentine's second album, opens with "Only Shallow", released on Creation in 1991 and later its second single. Kevin Shields wrote the music and Bilinda Butcher the words, and it's the record's statement of intent: Shields' so-called glide guitar, strummed while he works the tremolo bar hard, so the chords bend and warp like a melting record, with Butcher's voice drifting somewhere inside the roar. Debbie Googe's bass and Colm Ó Cíosóig's drums punch through the haze.

Getting there took three years in nineteen studios. Alan Moulder was hired in 1989 and was the one engineer Shields trusted even to mic his amplifiers; the rest, Shields later said, were house staff who told the band that everything they wanted was wrong. Anjali Dutt took over in the spring of 1990 and helped track vocals and guitars, and Shields produced and mixed it himself.

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