Day 84 (Throwback Thursday): Slint — Spiderland
INTERIOR: LOFT APARTMENT ON THE BORDER OF PARK SLOPE AND GOWANUS
Precocious, Woke 5-Year Old Child: “Dad, who is the man on the TV and why does he want to perpetuate the exorbitant wealth of the ownership class through the proposed abolition of the estate tax at a time when wealth inequality under late capitalism is ripping the very fabric of American society apart?”
Gen-X Dad: “That’s, Paul Ryan, and, uh… why don’t you ask me about something else.”
PWC: “Ok, well what was the music you liked to listen to when you were a little kid?”
GXD: “Well, pretty much everyone was listening to Nirvana when I started high school in 1991. Flannel shirts as far as the eye could see.”
PWC: “So they were the best band then?”
GXD: “Well… no. My favorite band from back then was a little group called Slint”
PWC: “Are they famous?”
GXD: [sighs deeply and stares into middle distance while sipping a craft IPA] “Well, no. No they aren’t. But they probably deserved to be.”
PWC: “Why not?”
GXD: “Well, they technically broke up right after their seminal second album Spiderland, and music worked differently back then. You had to pay for albums, you know. It was already very rare for a band under the broad umbrella of punk (like Nirvana) to break through in that environment as it was. It’s even harder when you aren’t playing shows or promoting the album you put out on an independent label.”
PWC: “Ok”
GXD: “Besides, Brian McMahon’s brilliant, spoken word vocals weren’t exactly destined for mass appeal.”
PWC: “So what was so great about them then? Why do you still care?”
GXD: “Well, because they were born of Louisville’s hardcore and punk scene, but used their massive talent to refute its orthodoxy and essentially construct post-rock. Spiderland is an essential text that so many bands have tried and failed to fully duplicate.”
PWC: “Wasn’t the bald man from those documentaries you made me watch already doing that sort of thing?
GXD: “Yes, and no. Fugazi arguably had incorporated elements of post-hardcore at the time, but Spiderland stretched the ideas of dynamics to extreme lengths. Slint was ahead of the curve when it came to spacious, gorgeous guitar work that used volume and intensity with surgical precision rather than blunt ferocity.
Ian Mackaye shows up in the Slint documentary too, by the way.”
PWC: “I mean, I guess that’s lit but what else did they do?”
GXD: “Besides practically inventing math rock out of thin air and playing it by feel rather than turning time signatures into equations and squeezing the life out of it until it becomes a joke? Well, offering up a less-dated alternative to grunge, I guess.”
PWC: “Well if it’s not dated, what do you like about it now?
GXD: “So many things. There’s the way the sound of the ‘chorus’ on ‘Breadcrumb Trail’ mimics the narrator’s wild rollercoaster ride, which is really a metaphor for fate and free will when you contrast it with the determinism of fortune-telling.”
PWC: “Do the lyrics come to any sort of conclusion?”
GXD: “Not really. In fact, McMahon apparently wrote most of them in the studio, and that’s not the point anyway. You’ll get it when you’re older, I guess.”
PWC: “I don’t know that I’ll be able to cope with that sort of ambiguity growing up in an age when everything feels like it’s black and white, but anyways, what else?”
GXD: “Let’s see: ‘Nosferatu Man’ is just one perfect example of how well McMahon and Pajo were on the same page as guitarists, and they definitely took full advantage of the freedom a Drop D tuning gave them to create unsettling chords that were more than just noise. Some people don’t seem to like Don, Aman, but it’s an excellent example of how they could write instrumentation that’s perfectly suited to tell a short story. It’s as wiry as Don’s internal monologue, and the pace gradually increases as his social anxiety mounts. If Patti Smith had a hardcore scene to grow up in rather than spouting off about Rimbaud all the time, this is probably the kind of song she would’ve written.”
PWC: “Is that the old lady who hung out with the pope once?”
GXD: “Among other things, yeah.”
PWC: “What does mom think about them?”
GXD: “We kind of agree to disagree when it comes to Slint. She gets why I like them, but the glacial pacing is something she isn’t into. And she has different feelings about how McMahon’s ‘singing’ is dripping with disaffection. I think it’s emblematic of the whole early 90’s ‘slacker’ thing that would proliferate in the years after, but agree to disagree. Don’t get her started about “For Dinner…” even I’ll admit that one’s probably the least essential. Could probably build up to something better, but that was their choice.”
PWC: “So why should I stream Spiderland today, in 2017, on the iPhone X that I, a five-year old have for some reason?”
GXD: “Because the ripples of what Slint did with this album still reverberate today. Whether you’re into post-rock, shoegaze, whatever, the influence of what this unsung album would eventually do for guitar-based music with just some clean tones and a little creativity is hard to overstate.”
PWC: “Got it, dad. Now, how come Donald Trump hasn’t been swept up in the wave of sexual assault allegations despite the preponderance of evidence from well over a dozen accusers?”
GXD: “We may never know. Go to bed.”
This is Day 84 in my 100 albums in 100 days series, where I review a new album or EP I haven’t heard in full before every day through December 31st. Check out yesterday’s post or see the full archives for more
