My Bloody Valentine for first Dublin headline show since 1992 ...

It’s a big day for live music, and a rare one as MBV are back playing live in Ireland.

The legendary Irish/English shoegaze band have been announced for their first Irish gig since Electric Picnic in 2013.

My Bloody Valentine play the 3Arena in Dublin on Saturday 22nd November 2025 for a Foggy Notions promoted show.

It’s the band’s first headline gig in Dublin city since 1992, a 33 year gap.

No doubt about it. This is a big announcement.

The band’s last worldwide shows took place in North America in October 2018.

In 2021, Domino re-released all the MBV’s catalogue on streaming & vinyl.

My Bloody Valentine London studio 1988 for Melody Maker Tickets

Tickets from €65.70 plus fees.

Foggy Notions are presenting the show, which will go on sale Friday 29th November at 10am via ticketmaster.ie.

Presale

Sign up via mybloodyvalentine.org and foggynotions.ie for presale access.

My Bloody Valentine are Bilinda Butcher (guitar/vocals), Colm Ó Cíosóig (drums/sampler), Debbe Googe (bass), and Kevin Shields (guitars/vocals/sampler).

Listen to our podcast on My Bloody Valentine’s classic 1991 album Loveless:

After a series of more typically indie releases, they pursued a far more singular approach to creating unconventional and innovative music, eschewing conventional techniques, clichés, and gimmicks, while soaking up inspiration from hip-hop artists like Public Enemy and Beastie Boys and the peerless production work of The Bomb Squad.

“Hip-hop was so much more innovative and modern than any jangly-guitar, Velvet Underground wannabe, sunglasses wearing, cool types, or any so-called indie scene,” maintains Kevin Shields. “People couldn’t get their head around hip-hop for a long time, they could only hear rapping, but musically it was so innovative. It was truly modern music.”

A cover of Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra’s Sand as performed by Einstürzende Neubauten was another beacon of inspiration, which Kevin Shields describes as “uncompromising, but still sounding like the world was ending.”

My Bloody Valentine’s first release for Creation Records, You Made Me Realise, was the sound of a band taking a sledgehammer to their former selves and purging the musical remnants of the past.

They increasingly found the contemporary English indie scene to be extremely mannered and staid, preferring the grit, volume, and texture of American guitar music by Sonic Youth, Hüsker Dü, and Dinosaur Jr.

Their debut album, Isn’t Anything, was recorded in the summer of 1988 and went to number one in the UK Independent Albums Chart on its release the following November. Isn’t Anything is adored by musicians such as Graham Coxon from Blur and Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai. Braithwaite recalls how hearing Feed Me With Your Kiss for the very first time at the age of 13 opened up to him the powerful possibilities of music.

Isn’t Anything was loftily ordained as the Eighties rock album by one commentator, but of course, Isn’t Anything isn’t a rock album, but a band turning music on its head. “It all felt free,” maintains Kevin Shields. “Then we became a band that people knew.”

In 1990, My Bloody Valentine released Glider, a four-track EP opening with Soon, a seven-minute track sounding familiar yet completely alien all at once. At a lecture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Brian Eno, who would later work with Kevin Shields in 2018, claimed Soon set a new precedent for pop.

“If Steve Reich or Glenn Branca had been responsible for it they would have been given an award by the classical music establishment,” Eno said in tribute.

Another 4-track EP, Tremolo, followed in February 1991, featuring the swirling and kaleidoscopic track, To Here Knows When. Their second album, Loveless, is universally lauded as a stone-cold masterpiece and a landmark in musical history. Loveless was not just deemed to be the best album of 1991, but of the entire 1990s, and is frequently appraised as one of greatest of all time.

Robert Smith of The Cure reportedly discovered Loveless after a phase of exclusively listening to disco and Irish folk in a concerted effort to avoid his contemporaries. “My Bloody Valentine was the first band I heard who quite clearly pissed all over us,” Smith gushed, declaring Loveless to be one of his favourite ever albums.

My Bloody Valentine disbanded by the mid-1990s. They reformed in 2008 for a world tour beginning with a five-night London residency in the Roundhouse. After extensive touring, playing numerous festivals, and curating All Tomorrow’s Parties on both sides of the Atlantic, they self-financed the completion of their third album.

m b v was initially released online in February 2013. It crashed their website and spectacularly crushed the assumption that a successor to Loveless would never see the light of day. Despite numerous offers, m b v was a 100% independent release. My Bloody Valentine wanted to own their own music and be completely free to create and release it on their terms.

In 2020, they collaborated with the esteemed US streetwear brand Supreme for a sold out collection of clothing featuring artwork from Loveless, Glider, and Feed Me With Your Kiss.

In 2022, they signed to Domino Records, made their back catalogue available on streaming services for the very first time, and reissued on physical formats Isn’t Anything, Loveless, m b v, and EPs 1988 – 1991. In November 2024, m b v was listed at number 7 in a countdown of the 500 best albums of 2010s published in a special edition of Uncut.

After redefining sound in the late 20th century, My Bloody Valentine continue to enthral listeners and new generations as the 21st century splutters towards the end of its first quarter. The world may well be going to hell in a handbasket, but their music still deeply resonates as it finds more hearts, minds, and ears than ever before.

Éamon Sweeney November 2024.