What does it say about pop in 2008 that one of the best pieces of music writing I've read this year is about records released almost seventeen years and twenty years ago respectively? For inspired music-writing you first need inspired and inspiring music?
Not that I totally agree with Taylor. He's dead right that the sonically-clotted Loveless isn't overall as thrilling an album-length experience as Isn't Anything, is somewhat "overcooked" and at times "suffocating". (Indeed the four Creation EPs, merged, would make for the ultimate MBV album, I think, knocking the two proper ones way out of the park... apart from "Soon" and "To Here Knows When" (EP A-Sides as well as Loveless pinnacles) there's nothing on either album that matches the first two EPs's "Slow" and "I Believe" (although Isn't's "All I Need" comes close).
But then this claim--"it was MBV who poisoned British guitar rock for more than half a decade... left a legacy of laziness from which it’s never really recovered... these bright, intrepid records sired a generation of sludge" --seems a bit over the top. Who exactly does he have in mind? Shoegaze only lasted a couple of years, and even that had its moments, wasn't completely null and devoid.
