Turn My Head Into Sound: A History Of Kevin Shields And My Bloody Valentine

by Andrew Perer

Turn My Head Into A History Of Kevin Shields And My Bloody Valentine tells the story of one of the great sonic innovators of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.


My Bloody Valentine have released only three albums in their forty-year career, but each of them has made a seismic impact. Isn’t Anything (1988) is often cited as an Ur-text of shoegaze and dream rock; Loveless (1991) is an undisputed masterpiece heralded by many as the greatest album of the 1990s; m b v (2013) is one of the best-loved comeback albums in recent memory.


For those who know Kevin Shields and his work already, he is an indie-rock icon, but by other measures he’s still a relatively obscure figure in the musical mainstream, and to date there has been no full-length appraisal of his work or his band’s career. Until now.


Turn My Head Into Sound is based on research gathered over decades as well as interviews with people who were there, some of them speaking on the record for the first time. Longtime fans of the band will find plenty of new information here, including the full story of the tumultuous period at Island Records following the release of Loveless.


Shields is truly a one-of-a-kind musician, and this book—which fills in the gaps, corrects errors, and takes an objective look at his and the band’s entire career, warts and all—paints the full picture of one of the most revolutionary sonic artists of our time, including his work outside of MBV as an engineer, producer, remixer, and auxiliary member of Primal Scream, as well as his contributions to several films by Sofia Coppola.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

264 pages, Paperback

Published December 16, 2025

Reviews

[Skrot · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic biography and history of Kevin Shields and My Bloody Valentine. It digs beneath the rumors and mythology to tell the story in a straightforward and engaging way. It does a great job of analyzing the techniques and tools that Shields and the band used to create their groundbreaking sound and songs, without getting bogged down in minutiae. You leave the book with a renewed sense of what makes the music so unique. It often embeds you in the position of the listener as the music would’ve been experienced when it first came out, putting you in that headspace so you can feel how alien and exciting it all was (and remains). I like that there was emphasis on the interpersonal relationships within the band and how important every member is, especially in terms of the live setting and the overall spirit of the group. The interlude on hypnagogia helped me to better understand Shields’ mindset and inner world. And the discussion of Shields’ fascination with unorthodox, irregular forms of musical timing, when combined with assessments of Colm Ó Cíosóig’s unique drumming style, helped me to appreciate the rhythmic approaches underpinning the music. All in all, this book is a success, both for fans of the band and for people who just enjoy reading about innovative music in general.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Becoming an MBV fan doomed me to a life sentence of waiting for inconsistent rewards from the band and principal protagonist Kevin Shields. Shields is a genius musician, and smart/stubborn enough to refuse to produce anything that doesn't meet his absolutely uncompromising standards. The benefit is that the MBV catalog astounds me on so many levels. The drawback is Shields' vexing dearth of output over the last 3+ decades.

So most anything MBV-related that we can get is welcome, and Andrew Perer’s book is a treat. He didn't have access to the band but it’s supremely well-researched. He must’ve read or watched every interview, story, and snippet in existence, and compiled it all into as complete a story as we're ever gonna have. There’s a great companion website too. I’m now catching up on my MBV obscurities!

He treats Shields fairly, writing with optimism and empathy, and generally defending him. That doesn’t mean he ignored the numerous anecdotes about Shields’s sometimes infuriating fussiness* or inability to be productive. But that’s the whole dissonant and complicated thing about him. Without his standards none of this happens the way it does. But Kevin’s not always right! He disowns a lot of his early work, and a lot of it is great. So, he suffers from what a lot of artists do—self doubt. Greatly magnified after the release of Loveless, after which the band spent years in a purgatory of unfulfilled contracts, internal strife, breakups, depression, poverty.

Who do you blame when you're given everything you ask for but fail to live up to the potential that's been assigned to you, and which you've assigned yourself by signing a deal with a major label for a very large amount of money? Shields has grappled with this question over the years, changing his assessment of that time in his life multiple times, at times rationalizing or exaggerating what occurred to try and make sense of things.

It can all be true simultaneously that (1) Kevin Shields is brilliant, (2) but not so much when it comes to funneling that into productivity, (3) he was under extreme pressure to follow up a notorious albatross of a record, (4) creative dead ends are a fact of artistic life, and (5) the dude just had some pretty crummy work habits. There’s one story detailing his usual routine of showing up to the studio around 8pm, watching TV for a few hours and smoking a lot of pot, and then if he got into the mood, starting to fiddle around with some music around 2am. Listen, some people just don’t do well with unstructured time.

Perer captures this whole nuanced complexity well, and has a genuine love for the band that I’m glad to share. It does seem like Kevin’s in a better place. He’s older and hopefully wiser. So while I’m not giving up hope that 2013’s every-bit-as-good-as-Loveless mbv isn’t the last we hear from them, to paraphrase, uh, myself, from my review of the long-unfinished Steerswoman series: if this is all there’s going to be, I'm still glad to have had it.

*Here's mine. I saw them one time live, 2013 in Philadelphia. Kevin spent every song break angrily yelling at his stage guy (and sometimes starting a song, then stopping, for an extra opportunity). Maybe the guy actually did screw a bunch of stuff up, but none of us in the audience knew any difference. Kevin didn’t say a word to us the whole excellent show except at the end when he said something like “Sorry this was terrible.”

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

A meticulously researched biography into the world and mind of Kevin Shields and My Bloody Valentine. It exposes the myth of Shields and My Bloody Valentine causing Creation Records to reach the brink of bankruptcy following the production of Loveless. I enjoyed how the book also focuses on how sound engineering and recording processes in the studio translate to live experiences. The revelation that Patti Smith acted as a catalyst to inspire Shields to revisit MBV after a lengthy hiatus is also worth a mention. A great book for fans of My Bloody Valentine, Kevin Shields or anyone who has an interest in the wider music industry.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

if you love My Bloody Valentine you will love this book. If you don't love MBV there is something fundamentally wrong with you.

The book tells the story of Kevin Shields and the band in terms of who they are as people and the relationships between them. It tells of how the songs were written and how the band's unique, innovative sound was created. It tells the story of the painstaking process behind producing the music and why that led to only three albums being released in 20-odd years. It also gives a remarkable insight into how Shields' one-off musical brain works.

An absolutely fascinating account of one the last true geniuses of modern rock music. Read loudly.

[Brett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Biography of the band My Bloody Valentine and its history, mostly following its main creative force, Kevin Shields. Very good and very detailed in the changes that the band went through and the influences that went into such. A lot of it may not be new to hardcore fans, but it's nice to have this information in one place. Though that being said, credit to the author for interviewing Island Record's A&R, which gives some insight into an era where the only real info we have is from Shields, who is not exactly the most reliable source of information. Only real downside is there are some spots the author can be a bit opinionated (the section about MBV's place in shoegaze and especially the author distaste for Chapterhouse, most notably (even if I don't disagree with their assessment)).

[Ian Mathers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this. Wrote about it at some length for Dusted, here.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun book. Not necessarily loaded with crazy insights, but I would chalk that up to the subject rather than the author. Must read for MBV fans.

[Eric Rovie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Focused on the sound and the mind of Kevin Shields, with lots of critical analysis along the way, this is a nice counterpoint to the story told in Cavanagh’s Creation tome.