Every month this year, I’m dedicating myself to getting into a new band.  By ‘new band’, what I really mean is an old band who I’ve known of for awhile but have for one reason or another never checked out.  Maybe they were a genre I wasn’t into, maybe they were the favorite band of someone I didn’t like, maybe I was just lazy.  Whatever reason, I’m going to spend the month trying to get into them.

If, at the end of the month, I find myself enjoying the music I’ll buy an album.  And if not, I’ll save my money for something else.

My New Band for November is:

My Bloody Valentine

From the wiki page

My Bloody Valentine are an alternative rock band formed in Dublin, Ireland in 1983. Named after the 1981 horror film of the same name, the band’s most successful lineup has consisted since 1987 of founding members Kevin Shields (guitar and vocals) and Colm Ó Cíosóig (drums) with the addition of singer-guitarist Bilinda Butcher and bassist Debbie Googe.

As My Bloody Valentine’s music evolved, their use of distortion, pitch bending, and digital reverb resulted in a sound that came to be known as shoegazing.

My personal history with My Bloody Valentine:

Around the time I started falling hard in love with Radiohead, I kept hearing references to this other band, My Bloody Valentine. This was not because the bands were similar in style. No, this was because in the opinion of Indie kids and music critics, these two bands created the two greatest albums of the 1990s. On these lists of greatest albums, my all time favorite album, OK Computer, frequently appears one slot above the other, Loveless, by My Bloody Valentine.

At some point I remember giving Loveless a listen. A listen. As in, my new favorite band was being challenged by this other band for 90s supremacy and I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. I played the album, found it hard to get into, and have never tried again. That has always bothered me. I know that’s how a lot of people approach Radiohead (especially their latter catalog) and for that reason they miss out on a truly wonderful band.

This month, I aim to rectify that mistake. Maybe it’s time for me to finally come to appreciate what so many people consider one of the best albums of an entire decade. Then again, maybe I’ll spend a month with the album (and others by the band) and decide that my shoes aren’t worth gazing at.

That’s what I’m here to find out. If anyone out there has recommendations for albums besides Loveless to check out, please comment below. Of, if you’re like me and you’ve never given this band a real shot, maybe you’ll do so this month.