Spiderland

Slint formed in 1986 in Louisville, Kentucky, after the dissolution of two local bands: Squirrel Bait and Maurice.[1] The founding members included Brian McMahan (guitar, vocals), David Pajo (guitar), Britt Walford (drums) and Ethan Buckler (bass guitar).[2] Slint's debut album, the Steve Albini-produced Tweez, was released in 1989 on the group's self-owned record label Jennifer Hartman Records and Tapes.[2] The album's sound has been described as "a collection of odd stylistic approaches, fractured rhythms, and strange lyrical fragments."[2] Buckler left the band out of dissatisfaction with Tweez, and was replaced with Todd Brashear.[3] The band's second recording was an untitled extended play (EP) commonly referred to as Slint. The instrumental rock sound featured on the EP, which would not be released until 1994, reflected the band's new musical direction.[4] After the band ended its brief tour in support of Tweez, most of its members attended college.

The 1989 studio recordings caught the ear of Corey Rusk, a co-founder of Touch and Go Records. "That was just so radically different than Tweez, and in a way that was immensely appealing to me," Rusk said. "I remember getting a tape of that and just listening to it over and over, really fucking loud."[5] By early 1990, Rusk agreed to pay for the band to record in-studio and release their next album through Touch and Go.[6]

Before recording Spiderland, Slint performed instrumental versions of their new songs during a concert at the Kentucky Theater (pictured in undated photo) on June 23, 1990.

On July 14, 1990, two weeks after the release of Tweez, Slint played a show supported by Crain and King Kong at which they debuted early versions of four songs: "Nosferatu Man", "Breadcrumb Trail", "Good Morning, Captain", and "Washer".[7] On June 23, 1990, they performed nearly finalized instrumental renditions of the songs from Spiderland during a concert at the Kentucky Theater.[8]

Around this time McMahan and Walford began writing together for the band's next record, creating six new songs which the band practiced throughout the summer of 1990. Slint entered River North Records in August 1990 to record Spiderland. At that time there were no vocals or lyrics prepared for the album, so the band wrote them while in the studio. The album's producer, Brian Paulson, was known for his "live" recording style in the studio, with minimal takes.[9] Paulson recalled "It was weird while I was doing [Spiderland] because I remember sitting there, and I just knew there was something about it. I've never heard anything like this. I'm really digging this but it's really fucking weird."[9]

The recording sessions for Spiderland are reputed to have been difficult for the members of the band and were, according to AllMusic, "intense, traumatic and one more piece of evidence supporting the theory that band members had to be periodically institutionalized during the completion of the album."[10] Rumors circulated that at least one member of Slint had been checked into a psychiatric hospital.[11] Walford later addressed these stories in an article in Select by saying, "[We were] definitely trying to be serious about things, pretty intense, which made recording the album kinda stressful."[11] The recording was completed in four days.[9]

The music of Spiderland is noted for its angular guitar rhythms, dramatically alternating dynamic shifts and irregular time signatures. McMahan's singing style interchanges between mumbling spoken word and strained shouting. The lyrics of Spiderland are often written in a narrative style. Influences on the record included Gang of Four, Black Sabbath and Sonic Youth.[12] Will Hermes of Spin summarized the album's sound as "mid-'70s King Crimson gone emo: screeching guitar chords and gorgeous note-spinning in odd-metered instrumentals speckled with words both spoken and sung".[13]

The album's opening track, "Breadcrumb Trail", describes a day spent at a carnival with a fortune-teller.[14] The song features a complex arrangement with sharp transitions, and the guitar fluctuates between a clean-sounding riff with harmonics in the verse to heavy distortion featuring extremely high-pitched notes in the chorus.[14]

"Nosferatu Man", the second track, is inspired by the 1922 German Expressionist silent film Nosferatu.[15] The song's verse includes a dissonant guitar riff, which uses high-pitched notes similar to those in "Breadcrumb Trail" and a drumbeat based on snare and toms, absent of cymbals.[15] The chorus, featuring "jagged" distorted guitar and a beat with "thrashing cymbals with quick drum fills", segues into an extended jam before the song ends with 30 seconds of feedback.[15]

"Don, Aman" features Walford on lead vocals and guitar. Delivered in a hushed tone, the song's ambiguous lyrics depict the thoughts of an "isolated soul" before, after and during an evening at a bar.[16] The tempo quickens throughout, and then becomes loud and distorted before slowing back to the original tempo.[16]

"Washer", the album's longest track, features a "barely audible" intro with guitar and cymbals before the rest of the band comes in.[17] The song builds tension until the final verse, which features loud distortion, and is followed by a lengthy outro.[17]

"For Dinner..." is an instrumental track.[18] Beginning with a quiet section of "brooding chords throb[bing] with the occasional rumble of muted toms and bass drum", the song cycles through sections of building and releasing tension.[18]

The final song of the album, "Good Morning, Captain", is a tribute to the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.[19] The song features a two chord guitar structure, a "spindly, tight riff" from the rhythm section and a "jerky" beat.[19] During the recording of the song's final chorus, McMahan became physically sick due to the strain of yelling over the guitars.[11] David Peschek of The Guardian compared "Good Morning, Captain" to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven", writing that "the extraordinary Good Morning Captain is [Slint's] Stairway to Heaven, if it's possible to imagine Stairway to Heaven bleached of all bombast."[12]

On the iTunes edition of the album, an additional track is added to the end of the album, entitled "Utica Quarry, Nighttime". The track is simply 15 minutes of field recordings of Utica Quarry, the same place where the photos for Spiderland were taken.

Mitchell P. Howes Lime Quarry in 1988

Will Oldham in 2009

The cover of Spiderland shows Slint swimming in a secluded quarry lake in Utica, Indiana. The photograph was shot by Will Oldham, a friend of the band and future musical collaborator with several of its members.[20]

The name Spiderland originates from McMahan's younger brother, who thought that the record sounded "spidery".[11] The album's black-and-white cover photograph, which depicts the members of the band (Brashear, McMahan, Walford and Pajo, from left to right) treading water in the lake of an abandoned quarry, was taken by Will Oldham.[21] An article in The Stranger credited the cover for creating a mystique surrounding Slint, noting "[m]ost people only had seen Slint as four heads floating in a Kentucky quarry on Spiderland's cover. Listeners pondered the band's sparsely adorned black-and-white covers as if they were runes bearing secrets."[22] Chris Gaerig of the Michigan Daily wrote, "the cover of Slint's masterful Spiderland captures the joyous fear and violence of the album so precisely it shakes souls. The group—submerged in a lake to their chins with deranged smiles—seems to be stalking you, hovering out of the black-and-white façade."[23] Several other promotional images have been taken from the same photo session with Oldham.[24]

The back cover features a photograph of a dead wolf spider taken by Noel Saltzman, who was also responsible for the uncredited cover photo for the band's untitled 1994 EP.[25] Saltzman encountered the spider in a shed while working a summer job and, as the spider would not remain still to be photographed, Saltzman killed it, froze it, and repositioned it with tweezers to take the shot.[25] The inside sleeve contains the message "interested female vocalists write 1864 douglas blvd. louisville, ky. 40205". McMahan confirmed that this message was serious, and said "We did get some responses and we did listen to CDs and tapes. We didn't end up doing anything immediately, so that idea of adding someone sort of fell by the wayside."[26] The message "this recording is meant to be listened to on vinyl" is printed on some CD issues of Spiderland, demonstrating Slint's preference for analog audio devices.[27]

Slint broke up in December 1990 in the middle of final preparations for Spiderland's release.[28] A planned tour of Europe was scrapped.[29] Under the circumstances, the album arrived without promotion and failed to find an audience.[30] It did not chart in the US or the UK.[31] It left little to no impression on college radio.[32] Fewer than 5,000 copies were sold.[note 1] The former bandmates had already moved on to new projects, and Pajo said it seemed certain Slint would be "just another blip".[34]

Initial critical reception

Professional ratings

Reviews prior to the 2014 reissue
Review scores
Source	Rating
All Music Guide (2001, 4th ed.)	[35]
AllMusic (online ed.)	[36]
Christgau's Consumer Guide (2000)	C+[37]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music (1998, 3rd ed.)	[38]
Melody Maker (1991)	"Ten fucking stars"[39]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004, 4th ed.)	[40]
Select (1991)	[41]
Spin Alternative Record Guide (1995)	8/10[42]

The album's release passed virtually unnoticed by the American music press.[43] Even punk zines overlooked it.[note 2] In a later interview, McMahan said that they "didn't engage with the media either way, but had we engaged, with the 'zine culture or the music press at the time, there wasn't really a huge infrastructure for getting information out on a broad scale. We definitely avoided it and it was not a considered marketing decision."[46]

In a glowing review for Melody Maker, Steve Albini (pictured in 2008) predicted Spiderland would someday be seen as a "landmark".[39]

There was one major exception to the general inattention from critics: a laudatory, 600-word review by Albini in the British music magazine Melody Maker.[43] Albini praised the music's originality and emotional intensity, as well as the clarity and immediacy of Paulson's production. He claimed that Tweez—which he himself had produced—only "hints at their genius" but had little of the "staying power" manifested on Spiderland. He awarded the album "ten fucking stars" and predicted that it would rise in stature:

"It's an amazing record ... and no one still capable of being moved by rock music should miss it. In 10 years it will be a landmark and you'll have to scramble to buy a copy then. Beat the rush."[39]

While Albini's review did not ignite much initial interest, it rescued the album from an otherwise-assured relegation to obscurity.[47]

Two other early reviews appeared in the UK press, both positive—though not as unreservedly enthusiastic as Albini. A review in Select noted the album's "creeping success", which reviewer Mike Noon attributed to Walford's affiliation with The Breeders. Noon cautioned that Slint's sound would take patience to fully appreciate: "As immediate as a snail trail to hell, Spiderland needs several plays to burn its way into your consciousness, but when it does..."[41] In September 1992, Ben Thompson reviewed both Spiderland and Tweez for The Wire. Thompson said that Slint's reputation was growing by that time, as "people like Pavement" were "hailing them as guiding lights for a new obliqueness". "It's not surprising these records confused people on first release", he wrote, in part because listeners had been primed to expect straightforward noise rock—a "total red herring" that concealed the band's "alarmingly introverted" sound. Although Thompson found Spiderland more accessible than Tweez, he wrote that it "still demands that you push you push your head up right close to the speakers (or buy some headphones) if you want to find out what is being said and sung. But you do want to find out."[48]

Spiderland continued to sell at a steady pace for more than a decade after its initial release, which was unexpected for an album by an obscure, defunct band who had rarely performed live before splitting up.[53] According to data from Nielsen SoundScan,[note 3] 50,000 copies had been sold as of July 2005.[55] Compared to record sales by contemporaneous alternative rock bands on major labels, sales of Spiderland would be considered modest or underwhelming.[note 4] Nevertheless, music critic Sasha Frere-Jones described its sales as "staggeringly large" in light of the band's lack of "corporate connections or media support or metropolitan following whatsoever".[56] . Kory Grow of the College Music Journal suggested that the album "has inspired countless bands (and therefore fans) far beyond its SoundScan numbers".[57]

Spiderland has become a landmark indie rock album and is considered, along with Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, to have been the primary catalyst of the post-rock genre.[58][59] The album is also regarded as being essential to "the fabric of math-rock genre".[60][61] David Peschek said that the album is "the ur-text for what became known as post-rock, a fractured, almost geometric reimagining of rock music stripped of its dionysiac impulse."[12] Rachel Devine of The List called Spiderland "arguably the most disproportionately influential [album] in music history".[62] Pitchfork reviewer Stuart Berman commented: "Spiderland's greatest legacy is not that it motivated a cluster of semi-popular bands in the late-90s and early 2000s to adopt its whisper-to-scream schematic. It's the boundless inspiration it perpetually provides for all the bands that have yet to emerge from the basement."[63]

McMahan reflected on the album's success: "We worked really hard on Spiderland. I mean, I definitely felt much more personal about it. I thought it represented us as people, musically, a lot more than Tweez did. That's about it. It seemed like when we were around, and actively playing and stuff, that people's responses to us were fairly ambivalent. I thought it was funny when the press picked up on it. For an independent release, it had a strange sort of audience and kept selling three or four years after we recorded it; it still sells more copies than when it first came out."[64] Touch and Go founder Corey Rusk said that Spiderland is "like an icon now. But when it came out, nobody cared! The band had broken up by the time the album came out, and it really didn't sell particularly well or get written about all that much in the year it was released. But it was a revolutionary, groundbreaking record, and it's one of the few instances where people catch up to it later on."[65]

Spiderland has also been said by Michael Alan Goldberg to have been a considerable influence on post-rock bands Mogwai, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Isis and Explosions in the Sky.[66] Dinosaur Jr and Sebadoh member Lou Barlow said of Spiderland, "It was quiet-to-loud without sounding like grunge or indie rock. It sounded more like a new kind of music."[11] PJ Harvey has included Spiderland in a list called Ten For Today, which were records she was enjoying listening to in 1992.[67] Bob Nastanovich of Pavement[68] and Mark Clifford of Seefeel[69] have also cited Spiderland as among their favorite albums. The album cover of Spiderland was recreated by The Shins in the music video for "New Slang".[70]

Reunions

Slint at the 2007 Pitchfork Music Festival. Since 2005, the band has reunited for three tours performing Spiderland live in its entirety.

Despite having plans for a tour of Europe to promote Spiderland, Slint broke up in November 1990, after Brian McMahan decided to quit the band.[71] Members of the band went on to join other musical projects, including Tortoise, The Breeders, Palace and The For Carnation.[2] Slint reunited briefly in 2005 for an eighteen-date tour. Pajo said, "We don't want to be a reunion band that keeps reuniting. ... I know that this is going to be it."[72] However, in 2007 Slint reunited again for a tour featuring performances of Spiderland in its entirety as part of All Tomorrow's Parties' "Don't Look Back" concert series celebrating classic albums.[73] The tour included appearances at the 2007 Pitchfork Music Festival[74] and Primavera Sound Festival.[75] McMahan said in an interview at the Pitchfork Music Festival that performing the album live was "pretty cool. It moves a little slower than it does on the record, but it's all there. ... It took some getting used to, some revisiting the material and rehearsing."[76] In an August 2013 interview with Vish Khanna, former producer Steve Albini revealed that the band was working on remastering Spiderland with engineer Bob Weston.[77]

Critical responses to Slint's reunion have been mixed, with detractors commenting on the music's unsuitability for a live setting. Chicago Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis wrote that although "fans greeted [Slint's performance at the Pitchfork Music Festival] as manna from heaven. [...] the musicians' fragile, intertwining guitar lines, mumbled attempts at poetry and uninspiring shoegazer personas were poor matches for the setting and the occasion, especially during the static, percussion-deprived 'Don, Aman' and the bloated anthem 'Good Morning, Captain'."[78] According to members of The A.V. Club, Slint's performance of "Don, Aman" at the festival "capture[d] the band's greatness and its greatest weakness: Slint completely lacks stage charisma, and playing a deathly quiet, moody song on a big outdoor stage just doesn't work."[79] Both DeRogatis and the A. V. Club review also noted that the band's performance was plagued by sound problems.[79][80] A New York review of a performance at Webster Hall opined "the deeply brooding, fussily-executed album finally sounded, sixteen years later, like the existential, cosmos-annihilating shrug it was envisioned as. Which is to say: It sounded fucking great."[81]

Spiderland (remastered)
Box set by Slint
Released	April 15, 2014 (2014-04-15)
Recorded	1989–1992
Length	1:58:35 + DVD
Label	Touch and Go
Producer	Bob Weston (remastering)

Professional ratings

2014 box set
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	99/100[50]
Review scores
Source	Rating
The A.V. Club	A[82]
Mojo	[83]
Pitchfork	10/10[63]
Q	[84]
Record Collector	[85]

In 2014, Touch and Go reissued Tweez and a version of Spiderland remastered by Bob Weston.[86] On April 15, a deluxe box set was released containing the remastered Spiderland album, fourteen previously unreleased tracks, the DVD documentary Breadcrumb Trail, and a photobook documenting Slint's history.[87] All 3,138 hand-numbered copies sold out prior to release.[88]

The bonus tracks featured in the set were selected by Slint and include demos, outtakes, and a live performance. The songs "Pam" and "Glen" (a reinterpretation of the original) were recorded during the Spiderland sessions and failed to make the album.[89] "Todd's Song" and "Brian's Song" were recorded after Spiderland while the band was briefly reformed.[90] "Cortez the Killer", a cover of the Neil Young song by the same name, was recorded on March 3, 1989, during a live performance in Chicago. Demos of "Nosferatu Man", "Washer", and "Good Morning, Captain" were also selected for the release.

Remnants of the second "bonus tracks" disc (sides E/F) from the Spiderland box set were sold separately in plastic sleeves from Touch and Go's website.[91] The disc – one of two bonus LPs from the collection – contains eight of the set's fourteen previously unreleased tracks.

All songs written by Todd Brashear, Brian McMahan, David Pajo, and Britt Walford, except where noted.

The album packaging omitted the band members' names.[92] The lineup credits below are adapted from The Great Alternative & Indie Discography (1999) by Martin C. Strong.[93] Walford performed vocals and guitar on "Don, Aman", accompanied by Pajo on guitar.[94]

Slint

• Todd Brashear – bass guitar (tracks 1–2, 4–6)
• David Pajo – guitar (tracks 1–6)
• Brian McMahan – vocals; guitar (tracks 1–2, 4–6)
• Britt Walford – drums; vocals (tracks 2, 3, 6), guitar (track 3)

Other personnel

• Will Oldham – photography ("band photo")
• Brian Paulson – engineering
• Noel Saltzman – photography ("spider photo")

• Spiderland at Discogs (list of releases)
• Spiderland at MusicBrainz (list of releases)