’s Bilinda Butcher gave a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd a quick, “hello,” after taking the stage at the Monday night. The crowd, for its part, took the acknowledgement as a cue to put in their ear plugs.
Butcher, along with Kevin Shields, Colm Ó Cíosóig and Debbie Googe proceeded to assault their Denver fans’ eardrums for more than an hour with one of the loudest — and most notorious — live shows in modern music. One of only six U.S. dates on the reclusive shoegaze pioneers’ tour supporting, “m b v” — the band’s first album in more than two decades — the group delivered through 12 amplifiers squeezed on-stage as they rifled through a tour of their discography.
Primary songwriter Kevin Shields’ patented, feedback-laden, reverse-reverb guitar work blasted through three full-stacks on tracks like “Only Shallow, “Only Tomorrow” and “I Only Said,” and though the tones he produced were the product of electric instruments pushed to their sonic limit, the crowd wanted more.
Running the gamut from fans who took to the group in the late-’80s to a younger generation first exposed to the band through “m b v,” cheers for My Bloody Valentine to “turn it up” came between most songs. This despite the fact that the group’s dedication to loudness left little room for Butcher’s narcotic vocals and was even rippling the water in the venue’s toilet bowls — seriously.
So My Bloody Valentine obliged, and Kevin Shields asked the sound engineer to give the fans what they wanted before launching into the band’s last track, “You Made Me Realise.” Itap how the group ends every show, but it isn’t necessarily the song thatap memorable.
Halfway through the track the band broke down into their wall of noise, a blistering, tinnitus-inducing wash of sound. Combine an MRI machine, a lathe and the Niagara Falls. Amplify it through a sound system in an enclosed room and turn the volume up as loud as it can go. It probably comes close to what My Bloody Valentine unleashed.
It only lasted for seven minutes — less than half of what the group delivered when it played Denver in 2009 — but it was enough to leave their fans happy, if a bit disoriented, as they exited the Ogden’s doors.
See our live Twitter chat from the night of the show below.
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Nic Turiciano is a writer and photographer in Fort Collins. You can follow him on Twitter at or email him at nturiciano@gmail.com.
