Recap My Bloody Valentine at the Fillmore Auditorium

My Bloody Valentine: It’s a hallowed name amongst certain music geeks. Many a conspiratorial whisper has been uttered about the band in the back hallways of venues and in dark living rooms in the 18 years since the release of its masterpiece, Loveless. Some fans were convinced that Kevin Shields, the band’s mastermind, had lost it entirely and would never set foot in public again, let alone play a show with MBV. Others tossed out rumors that Shields had recorded multiple albums’ worth of material since ’91 but scrapped it all. The band became a myth and the source of countless rumors. And then suddenly they’re back and rattling off tour dates, including Friday's show at the Fillmore.

Whether or not they meant it intentionally, the band had something to prove through the set they performed on Friday. The group was determined to remind fans about its overlooked body of work beyond Loveless. More than half the set consisted of songs from 1988's heavier, more aggressive Isn’t Anything and some of the earlier EPs. The decision to omit “Sometimes” from the band’s set list must have been a conscious decision, a way to subvert expectations, since that song’s inclusion on the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation introduced the band to a new generation of fans. They steered away from some of the “hits” and instead dug deeper into their back catalogue, resulting in an unexpectedly solid set. “Cigarette In Your Bed” sounded brand new and almost modern, and “(When You Wake) You’re Still in a Dream” tore through the huge room with an urgency the band never reached with any Loveless songs. Some of those songs sounded, well, a little tired. “I Only Said,” with its bendy, looping, siren-like outro, went on too long for its own good, and “Soon” traded its hypnotic, future-dance vibe for a naggingly incessant quality, as if it kept reminding you of its own repetitiveness.

But make no mistake: For the most part, My Bloody Valentine was loud, tight, and they did what they do very well. The wall of sound the band threw up was formidable, almost tangible, and it was hard not to feel like something monumental was happening as waves of distortion and shimmering cymbals penetrated the air (and the audience's skulls). Somehow all the myths surrounding the band were at once refuted and reinforced. But the beautiful part is that right in the middle of the whirlwind—the white noise, the crashing drums, Bilinda Butcher’s haunting oohs and aahs—none of the myths counted for anything. What mattered was the here-and-now: a performance by a band that hadn’t existed for a long time and may not exist for much longer.