Live Review: My Bloody Valentine & The Morning After Girls

The Morning After Girls are the kind of drunken pick-up you try your best to avoid in your more sober moments: sullen, sulky, dejected. They are the look of apathy, reflected in the despondent rattle of a tambourine. The guitarist felt harmonies should be falsetto 95 per cent of the time, and sung his own guitar parts. With no hint of humour, they clearly felt what they were doing on stage was more important than our pathetic attempts to have a good time. Alas, we were not there to be looked down upon. We were there to be plastered into walls of noise. They were unremarkable, and not likely to be fondly remembered.

My Bloody Valentine's arsenal wasn't delivered in a salvo of rapid-fire blows, though. Instead the euphoric whale song of I Only Said slipped us all something very welcoming, while the kaleidoscopic thrum flailed into the pitch-bent synth trigger of When You Sleep. If disappointment can be discussed within the confines of a My Bloody Valentine review, it had better be early on. The only song from recent surprise album m b v was the sedate, tentative mumbling of New You, but that was the only pit stop. It was, and always has been, difficult reconciling this malevolent, urgent music combusting and surging with the calm, almost lethargic delivery. Perhaps the energy pulsing through their scintillating tones came direct from MBV's souls, leaving them temporary, willing husks.

The contrast is grand – the billowing dream shroud, within the snug comfort of free foam earplugs, splintered asunder by Kevin Shields' magma guitar work. A wailing siren, a shattering column of glass, the Chelyabinsk meteor screaming over head; working out how these obliterating sounds fit in, around, or over the shimmering, simmering or shimmying rhythms is futile. On ferocious earlier songs like Nothing Much To Lose, Feed Me With Your Kiss, and perennial set closer You Made Me Realise, volume tangled with a quicker, more vital pace. The vim and vociferousness of the pre-Loveless era took up a third of the set, and gave context to the brewing maelstrom about to occur; there's a reason these blissed-out slouches insist on kneading eardrums – it's to prepare you for submission. To put it in stark relief for the uninitiated, the notorious noise apocalypse thundered out of You Made Me Realise's breakdown. Fifteen minutes of our time was filled with jet engine turbulence set to waves of white noise and it was, typically, glorious. Some walked out, some covered their ears hoping to block the sound out entirely, while others gyrated, pogoed and nodded, smiling. There's isn't much sexier than ecstatic people reacting unexpectedly to overwhelming volume. Which is why My Bloody Valentine continue fucking with sound after almost 30 years and we continue to listen, dance, worship.