New MBV Album Due

First off, what?  To me, this is an incredible surprise that came absolutely out of nowhere.  Plenty of shoegaze bands have reissued their old albums in the past 5-10 years, Slowdive, Chapterhouse, Swervedriver, and Ride among them, but none of them have gone about recording new material, so obviously this is almost a dream come true that I would not have expected (though it does appear that Kevin Shields & Co. put a ton of effort into their remasterings, while the bands named above haven't really gotten together recently for anything, so maybe this isn't such a surprise).

There's one interesting caveat though:  http://www.nme.com/news/my-bloody-valentine/64118.  "The new My Bloody Valentine album was influenced by the Beach Boys".  For someone as pedantic as myself, this isn't exactly welcome news.  When bands start working with out-of-left-field pop influences, some odd things happen - consider Idlewild's post-Remote Part output and Suede's A New Morning for examples.

There is some hope, however.  In the news section of the My Bloody Valentine website, there's a quote from Kevin Shields where he says, "The songs on Loveless had more in common with folk-blues music to me."  If Loveless was inspired by generally bland folk and blues, I'm not too worried about a Beach Boys inspired MBV album.