Spiderland
Slint
Touch And Go, 1991

Reviewed by Piero Scaruffi

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Spiderland doesn't attenuate the experimental grasp of the Slint's sound, which had been introduced on the 1989 album Tweez. Rather, it accents the Louisville band's search for rhythm and timbre.

The coarse blues in "Breadcrumb Trail" features harmonies that are more chaotic and interlocutory than on the group's first record. "Don, Aman" indulges in a concert of avant-garde guitar chords that, played in a normal tempo, would be melodic. But played with such long, irregular breaks, the chords are only a sequence - a hypnotic effect mirrored in the acoustic passages of new age music and ravaged by Slint's very "rock" neuroses. The slow progressions of "Washer," with its whispers and pulsations, owe more to night-time blues than acid-rock, giving birth to the music of future slow-core progenitors such as Codeine. "For Dinner..." is even more narcotic, anemic and drowsy.

Almost all of the passages, despite these excursions, feature sudden winces of hard, hard rock, with "Nosferatu Man" perhaps more struck by this than any other track. The closer, "Good Morning, Captain," seems to summarize all of these highbrow techniques, alternating between fragments of irritable guitar and haunting vocal recitations. The effect erects an iceberg of tragic suspense, and actually constitutes a true upsetting of modern rock history.

Spiderland expresses emotions often put aside in modern rock, bucking stereotypes and never resorting to the prefabricated ideas of earlier sonic icons. Here, in only six tracks, Slint achieve the nirvana of alternative rock, wedding masterful playing, thoughtful composing and lyrical expression to a degree seldom reached by popular music. And even though its members probably never thought twice about it, they gave true inspiration, for better or for worse, to an entirely new subgenre of rock.

"A true upsetting of modern rock history. "

Piero Scaruffi
- NATN
Contributor

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