FIRST LISTEN: My Bloody Valentine - m b v

It's hard to explain why a new My Bloody Valentine album is such a big deal to anyone who's not in the know. The fact it comes almost 22 years after the Irish legends' most recent record and that said record was 1991's Loveless, widely considered to be one of the most influential albums of the modern era are of course the most striking reasons.

But there's nothing else in pop culture right now to really compare it to, because My Bloody Valentine – one of the most revered and genuinely influential indie rock bands in the history of the genre – never achieved much commercial success. Beautiful as Loveless is, it only ever got as high as number 24 on the UK charts, which is kind of shit given it reportedly cost £250,000 to make.

If you're an indie rock fan, you understand the importance of this new album, but you've also got to understand why many people aren't going to give a hoot about m b v. If you're one of those people, I implore you to change your ways from today because it's a pretty great time to be into My Bloody Valentine.

m b v kicks off She Found Now, a song with the kind of warm fuzziness we expect from the band; a distorted drone sits in the background as cleaner guitars chime over the top and Kevin Shields croons ever so gently over the top of this warm bed of sound. It's not quite the assault of Only Shallow that hammers the listener over the head when the needle drops on Side A of Loveless and, if you didn't know better, you'd think the band had restrained itself.

Only Tomorrow follows, it's plain and sweet with a fantastic vocal line that does most of the work as the band just churn away. The lead guitar takes centre stage for the song's conclusion, spluttering out that same great melody with a little more grit than the vocal which projected it early in the song.

Shit starts getting weird very quickly from here; the woozy Who Sees You is discomforting, a wash of guitar chords are battered, bent and twisted out of shape for the song's entire six minutes. It's the aural equivalent of seasickness and almost enough to make you start to regret the two bottles of cheap Pinot Gris you sank last night. A mixture of droning and pulsating synths and the gentle coo of Bilinda Butcher make Is This And Yes feel almost therapeutic – you kind of need it after the affecting Who Sees You – and is akin to an intermission, albeit one that tends to drag by the time its over.

New You is a cruisy slice of pop that still sounds like My Bloody Valentine, but feels like something rather different. This might be the band's finest pop song yet, Debbie Googe's [edit: Googe did not play on the record but will play live] fuzz bass providing a foundation for an irresistible vocal melody and a terrific overriding synth line. You could actually imagine hearing this on radio and it will be a damn shame if we don't in the coming months.

In Another Way is driven by a hectic electronic drum beat as a meandering synth line ensures the groove that the song exudes never really becomes comfortable, but it's nowhere near as maddening as the three-and-a-half minute industrial loop that is its follow up track Nothing Is. This brilliant piece of music can hardly be called a song, but it's astonishing how something seemingly so simple can be so engaging. It is, essentially, a mere one second sample looped incessantly for an entire song, the only change coming from parts of the band getting louder and softer as it goes on. It doesn't feel as if this is an attempt to provoke a reaction or rile up the listener, it feels like it is in its rightful place and the album is richer for its inclusion.

The only thing m b v really needed to achieve was to ensure it didn't shit all over the incredible legacy that the band have enjoyed in the past 21 years; it needed to be a record we were happy to have rather than one we could have done without. This album is a welcome addition to the small canon of My Bloody Valentine, it's no modern classic but it more than gets the job done.

Review by Dan Condon