Album: Spiderland
Artist: Slint
“Slint was a part of a mass of events that centred around the Louisville punk rock scene, around the independent / underground record scene of the 1980s, around the personal lives of the makers of this music, and very little of this is accessible to the world outside, or the world moved on. So the reception of Spiderland is a confusion of entitlement, justification and misinterpretation for some of us. There is nobody to help anybody understand what has happened”
—Will Oldham, introduction to Spiderland re-issue booklet
Artist: Slint
Born: Louisville, Kentucky
Released: March 1991
Genre: Post-rock
Influenced: PJ Harvey, Pavement, Mogwai, The Shins, Sigur Rós, LCD Soundsystem
My way of understanding post-rock in musical terms is to compare it to modernism in literature, in the way it marked a break from traditional song structures and modes of expression. Slint achieved this not just with instruments but also the lyrics which, like T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, offer a fragmentary narrative that serves to disorientate the listener rather than inform. Musically, progressive rock and krautrock had already explored alternatives to standard pop time signatures, in much the same way as jazz, and the influence of Can on early post-rock bands like Talk Talk and Slint is clear. For example, Breadcrumb Trail has some wildly animated singing reminiscent of Damo Suzuki, while the shifting rhythms of Good Morning, Captain are very similar to those of Oh Yeah on Can's Tago Mago. In Slint's sound you can detect the influence of punk and heavy metal but the results are entirely original. One innovation that producer Steve Albini introduced on Slint's first album, Tweez (1988), was the decision not to overdub vocals, leaving them low and sometimes almost inaudible in the mix. Brian McMahan's vocals often seem completely out of sync with the music and if you try and follow the narrative, it's hard to keep your bearings. Tortoise and Mogwai, two bands who were big fans of Slint, took things further by dropping the vocals altogether. What's most striking to me is how tight Slint are as a unit, the result of many sessions in the basement of drummer Britt Walford's family home, allowing them to build from moments of eerie quiet to deafening noise, and back again, with consummate ease.
Recorded in just 4 days, the effort of creating Spiderland exerted such a toll on the band that, by the time of its release in spring 1991, Slint had split up. Breadcrumb Trail makes for a surreal opening to the album, and from what I can gather the lyrics detail a loss of innocence at a fairground, the closing line of the song stating, "At the gate I said goodnight to the fortune teller / the carnival sign threw coloured shadows on her face / but I could tell she was blushing". The use of a rollercoaster ride as a metaphor for a young man losing his virginity makes for a thrilling listen. David Pajo's guitar playing is an essential component of the album's unique sound, especially the expert way he shifts from quiet, sinister riffs to loud, abrasive feedback, while always meshing with McMahan's more melodic guitar playing. Picking favourites on the album is almost pointless, given how perfectly it works as a whole, but the sinister mood of Nosferatu Man, the tension of Washer and the sheer heartbreaking majesty of Good Morning, Captain are all notable. Like Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the closing song on Spiderland is a powerful expression of loneliness, and in McMahan's impassioned "I miss you" at the end of the song you can hear his desire to return to the safety of his childhood, but knowledge that he can't. When Spiderland was released, there was no name or title listed on the LP's front cover, just a photo (taken by Will Oldham) of the heads of four young men visible above the surface of the water in a flooded quarry in Utica, Indiana. Thanks to a glowing review by Steve Albini (see quote below the Spotify playlist) and the appearance of Good Morning, Captain on 1995 slacker movie, Kids, interest in Slint has continued to grow and the band now enjoys high levels of critical acclaim. I can't wait to see them perform Spiderland live at the Green Man festival this summer.
"Spiderland is a majestic album, sublime and strange, made more brilliant by its simplicity and quiet grace. Songs evolve and expand from simple statements that are inverted and truncated in a manner that seems spontaneous, but is so precise and emphatic that it must be intuitive or orchestrated or both"
Influenced: PJ Harvey, Pavement, Mogwai, The Shins, Sigur Rós, LCD Soundsystem
My way of understanding post-rock in musical terms is to compare it to modernism in literature, in the way it marked a break from traditional song structures and modes of expression. Slint achieved this not just with instruments but also the lyrics which, like T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, offer a fragmentary narrative that serves to disorientate the listener rather than inform. Musically, progressive rock and krautrock had already explored alternatives to standard pop time signatures, in much the same way as jazz, and the influence of Can on early post-rock bands like Talk Talk and Slint is clear. For example, Breadcrumb Trail has some wildly animated singing reminiscent of Damo Suzuki, while the shifting rhythms of Good Morning, Captain are very similar to those of Oh Yeah on Can's Tago Mago. In Slint's sound you can detect the influence of punk and heavy metal but the results are entirely original. One innovation that producer Steve Albini introduced on Slint's first album, Tweez (1988), was the decision not to overdub vocals, leaving them low and sometimes almost inaudible in the mix. Brian McMahan's vocals often seem completely out of sync with the music and if you try and follow the narrative, it's hard to keep your bearings. Tortoise and Mogwai, two bands who were big fans of Slint, took things further by dropping the vocals altogether. What's most striking to me is how tight Slint are as a unit, the result of many sessions in the basement of drummer Britt Walford's family home, allowing them to build from moments of eerie quiet to deafening noise, and back again, with consummate ease.
Recorded in just 4 days, the effort of creating Spiderland exerted such a toll on the band that, by the time of its release in spring 1991, Slint had split up. Breadcrumb Trail makes for a surreal opening to the album, and from what I can gather the lyrics detail a loss of innocence at a fairground, the closing line of the song stating, "At the gate I said goodnight to the fortune teller / the carnival sign threw coloured shadows on her face / but I could tell she was blushing". The use of a rollercoaster ride as a metaphor for a young man losing his virginity makes for a thrilling listen. David Pajo's guitar playing is an essential component of the album's unique sound, especially the expert way he shifts from quiet, sinister riffs to loud, abrasive feedback, while always meshing with McMahan's more melodic guitar playing. Picking favourites on the album is almost pointless, given how perfectly it works as a whole, but the sinister mood of Nosferatu Man, the tension of Washer and the sheer heartbreaking majesty of Good Morning, Captain are all notable. Like Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the closing song on Spiderland is a powerful expression of loneliness, and in McMahan's impassioned "I miss you" at the end of the song you can hear his desire to return to the safety of his childhood, but knowledge that he can't. When Spiderland was released, there was no name or title listed on the LP's front cover, just a photo (taken by Will Oldham) of the heads of four young men visible above the surface of the water in a flooded quarry in Utica, Indiana. Thanks to a glowing review by Steve Albini (see quote below the Spotify playlist) and the appearance of Good Morning, Captain on 1995 slacker movie, Kids, interest in Slint has continued to grow and the band now enjoys high levels of critical acclaim. I can't wait to see them perform Spiderland live at the Green Man festival this summer.
"Spiderland is a majestic album, sublime and strange, made more brilliant by its simplicity and quiet grace. Songs evolve and expand from simple statements that are inverted and truncated in a manner that seems spontaneous, but is so precise and emphatic that it must be intuitive or orchestrated or both"
– Steve Albini, Melody Maker, 1991
—Will Oldham, introduction to Spiderland re-issue booklet
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