Live review: my bloody valentine at Aviva Studios

The rustling of plastic as packets of earplugs are opened is the last thing you hear before a wave of guitar distortion crashes down over you. Dublin band my bloody valentine open their first UK headline tour in ten years with ‘i only said’, a fan favourite track from their most beloved and renowned record, loveless. By the end of the song, there is not an audience member in sight who is not wearing some form of ear protection, and even the few brave fans who thought they could stand the immense volume have admitted an early defeat.

The setlist pays equal attention to each of my bloody valentine’s three studio records, as well as their 2012 compilation of EPs and rare tracks. The opening track is followed by ‘when you sleep’, ‘new you’, ‘You Never Should’, and ‘honey power’, all of which come from different albums. There is, however, a noticeable abyss in the place where ‘sometimes’, one of the band’s biggest hits, should be.

Co-guitar and vocalist Bilinda Butcher dedicates ‘honey power’ to her sister Jo-Anne, before a glow of amber and yellow lights wash over the crowd and accompany the burning racket and Butcher’s soft vocals. No use trying to make out the lyrics, they are tangled somewhere up in the air, spiralling through pounding echoes of noise.

The drums of ‘cigarette in your bed’ thunder through the floor of the Aviva Studios warehouse and shoot up to the lofty ceiling. Then, after ‘only tomorrow’, the siren sounds of ‘only shallow’ hit the crowd in the face and fill the air with a noise so powerful it feels like it could vaporise you if you step any closer.

“Sorry, say that again… sorry, I really can’t hear you.” Frontman Kevin Shields shrugs as he fails to understand a group of hecklers on the front row while the crew manage some technical difficulties. “I’m deaf as fuck!” he says, and it’s no surprise why. The tech issues come after the rumbling refrain of 'Nothing Much To Lose', during which bassist Debbie Googe and Colm Ó Cíosóig on the drums face each other.

“Mani used to really like this song, so…” says Shields before the band plays ‘soon’, and the crowd erupts in memory of the Stone Roses bass player, who died tragically at the back end of this year, aged 63. When this song, too, is interrupted by a "power outage", Bilinda jokes that it is a result of “fucking Mani fucking about!” The band play the song again and then have to stop performing for a while as the tech crew messes around with the equipment and tries to solve the problem.

“Anyone got any questions?” Kevin jokes as the band and audience wait around. “Can you make it louder?” comes a reply.

Credit: Isaac Watson @ Stay Golden PR

Fortunately for any other reporters in the crowd, Shields’s comment initiates an impromptu Q&A session. Through this, we learn that his favourite cigarettes are American Spirits. His favourite pedal is an old Vox Tone Bender from the sixties that’s broken but has a special sound that he has been unable to replicate with any working pedals.

He is asked what picks he uses, to which he replies, “this one", before chucking the plastic triangle into the crowd. He then recalls the first time he saw Ramones in the seventies and how Johnny Ramone would frisbee his guitar picks all the way to the back of the crowd.

When a Free Palestine chant is started, Shields comments, “the people running that show, they’re not going to listen unless you force them to. Ponerology – learn that word. It’s about how evil behaviour infiltrates society.”

This short interlude is followed by ‘Wonder 2’, ‘Feed Me With Your Kiss’, and then a hypnotising eight-minute wall of noise in the closing song, ‘you made me realise’. The band exits the stage to the Stone Roses’ ‘Waterfall’, and the mixture of old and young fans bleed out of the venue, taking their earplugs out and looking around in awe.