Spiderland

By: Slint

Reviewed by: ColinOmori

A Spidery Wonder

Six tracks in forty minutes.

Spiderland. A near-mythical record in indie circles, it has had an influence on anyone from Mogwai to Lou Barlow. But the name is heard more than the songs.

The first song, 'Breadcrumb Trail', is the most radio-friendly song on the album, which is unusual, considering it's six minutes of guitar harmonics and chiming arpeggios alternating with heavily distorted blasts of pure noise, a drone-esque bass and a 7/4 drum beat over spoken (and shouted in some parts; one of the record's most memorable moments is Brian MacMahan's scream of "Creeping up/into the sky" on the first chorus) vocals telling a tale of a visit to an amusement park, culminating in a roller-coaster ride with a fortune teller.

'Nosferatu Man', the second track, is in a 5/4 time signature, and the rolling, repetitive riff recalls Alice In Chains, but in a good way. As with most other Slint songs, the song is a quiet verse/loud chorus/quiet verse structure that they manage to pull off. VERY well. The song tells of a prince, who 'live[s] in a castle.' To make a long story short, he kills the Queen to gain the powers of a vampire. It's a lot more unsettling than it sounds.

The third song, 'Don, Aman', contains no drums or bass guitar. It does, however, contain a hard-strummed acoustic guitar riff over Brian speaking of a man, obviously named Don, who goes to a party. There's a typical Slint twist to this; Don has social anxiety. Brian says all this with such a fear in his voice, it's hard not to think that HE is Don. Lyrics like "For being a sty/in their engagement" and "Like swimming underwater in the darkness/Like walking through an empty house/Speaking to an imaginary audience/Being watched from outside, by no-one" send chills up one's spine. The acoustic guitar turns to a distorted electric, then back to an acoustic, as Brian tells of Don (presumably) committing suicide.

'Washer' is the fourth song on the album, and at just under nine minutes, is also the longest. This is the only song where Brian sings the whole time. The lyrics are like a suicide note, with couplets like "I won't be back here/Though we may meet again" and "Every time I ever cried from fear/Was just a mistake that I made." David Pajo's guitar emits arpeggios and dissonant riffs that are simply unforgettable. MacMahan quietly whispers "My head is empty/My toes are warm/I am safe from harm," meaning that the main character has killed himself by overdosing on sleeping pills or possibly painkillers. The song builds, tension-wise, throughout, before becoming tape-distortingly loud, and then back to the original tempo.

'For Dinner...', the penultimate song on Spiderland, is the shortest song on the album (barely exceeding five minutes) and is an ambient, guitar-driven instrumental. And although I say guitar-driven, coming from the direction of David Pajo, one would probably think it's a typical Slint 'quiet-loud-quiet' song, but no. It stays reasonably quiet throughout. It could be thought of as an intro to the last, and best song:

'Good Morning, Captain'. The guitar stays absent from most of the first few minutes of this seven-and-a-half minute colossus. Brian tells the story of a sea captain, on a shore after a storm destroyed his boat and killed all of his crew. He goes to a nearby house, and sees a child, who is terrified of him. The captain wants to be let in, but the child won't let him; a punishment for the captain's sins in life. I forgot to mention the captain is dead, which isn't even implied at all in the song, but it is in the poem Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which this song is an homage to. The typical quiet-loud-quiet structure dominates this song. Britt Walford pounds out his usual odd-time-signature, and Ethan Buckler's bass is loud and repetitive. The album's most memorable moment comes in the last minute of the song, where Brian chants obsessively, 'I swear I'll make it up to you' before finally letting loose and screaming 'I miss you!' so loud, so many times, that he was physically sick afterward.

Recording for Spiderland was, according to the band, 'Intense, and very traumatic.' Possibly true rumors circulated that the band had checked into a psychiatric hospital for a short period of time, which is kind of ironic, because Spiderland sounds like a late-night emergency meeting between a patient and his doctor.

Spiderland is a terrifying, cathartic, and paranoid forty minutes. Listen at your own risk. That being said, I give Spiderland what it deserves. Five mics.

Best Track(s)

Good Morning, Captain

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