My Bloody Valentine are the ultimate ‘90s cult guitar band. They helped define a genre – shoegaze – before transcending it, then disappearing for 20 years. Though their influence remained, their records were so out-of-fashion that they were impossible to find until eBay came along.
By the time of their seminal album , their approach to the guitar was completely iconoclastic. Led by the mercurial Kevin Shields, alongside coguitarist Bilinda Butcher, they developed a way of playing the guitar that had a lot more to do with atmosphere and sound design than just simple riffs or chord progressions. Saying that, however, they had some great hooks – the monolithic power chords of “Only Shallow”, legato
