Inexplicably deleted titles

This past weekend I was talking to my friend Paul at Criminal Records and he mentioned in passing that My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless has been deleted on vinyl in North America.

Neither of us could figure out any sensible reason for this apart from the possibility that there are plans in the works for some sort of 20th anniversary pressing that would replace the current version.

Loveless, originally released in 1991, was pressed in the U.K. on Creation and re-issued on vinyl in North America on Plain in 2003. (My own copy is the latter version.) 

The record is a seminal contribution to the “shoegaze” scene that developed in the U.K. and Ireland in the late-1980s and early-1990s and remains one of the more critically lauded releases of the decade, especially among indie reviewers. Pitchfork, for instance, rated it the second-best record of the 1990s.

For that reason alone I find it almost unfathomable that the deletion is due to lack of demand for Loveless. Indeed, for a lot of younger people (many of whose listening preferences are indelibly shaped by indie reviewers and arbiters of taste such as Pitchfork) that are enthusiastically getting into vinyl these days, this record is surely an essential title for a burgeoning collection.

I haven’t seen it overflowing any record store shelves in Toronto over the last few years. Which is to say, I hardly think that all those who fit the aforementioned bill already have it.

Making matters more puzzling is that Isn’t Anything, which is presumably much less in demand than Loveless, will apparently continue to be available.

Very odd.