When every entrant is handed earplugs it begs the question: why not just turn things down? Lessening their legendary volume, though, would reduce the impact of the My Bloody Valentine live show as a multi-sensorial, physical and musical experience. You wouldn’t experience every bass drum like a heartbeat, undergo the peculiar, otherworldly sensation of a ribcage rattling with sound or – during the encore – a noise so ferocious that it feels as if a gale force wind is flapping at your clothes.
My Bloody Valentine are, of course, credited with inventing shoegaze, the ethereal, dreamlike, effects-laden genre that has been rediscovered by the TikTok generation. However, at times here they seem to have more in common with noise warriors such as Einstürzende Neubaten than the drippier home counties combos that followed them.
That said, at the centre of the maelstrom there is an undeniable prettiness – in co-vocalist/guitarist Bilinda Butcher’s gentle singing, or the lovely melodies that somehow make themselves distinct amid be-hatted singer/guitarist Kevin Shields’ walls of shrieking sound. Such unfathomably but beautifully intermeshing textures are driven relentlessly by the rock solid rhythm section of bassist Debbie Googe and tireless drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig.
Walls of shrieking sound … Kevin Shields. Photograph: Isaac Watson
That their tours come along as rarely as comets – this is the first for seven years – makes the Irish-English band sound even more special and unique. It is startling to think that they first unleashed this sound in pubs, not the cavernous venues with eye-melting visuals they occupy nowadays. The near two-hour show traces their journey towards a form of aural sculpture.
Shields dedicates 1990’s landmark Soon – the song which took the indie-dance beat to the cosmos – to late Stone Roses bassist Mani (“he loved this”) but the power fails, and when they play the song again it fails a second time. Still, a subsequent two-minute gap doesn’t kill the momentum or reduce the need for those earplugs. The pulverising several-minute middle section of pure noise during astonishing closer You Made Me Realise is surely the closest guitar, bass and drums come to the sound of an apocalypse.
At OVO Arena, London, 25 November; and OVO Hydro, Glasgow, 27 November.