* * *
In the course of our conversation Brashear and I had gotten on to the subject of the Chicago scene circa 1988–89, when Walford and McMahan still lived there and Pajo and Brashear were living in Indiana. Steve Albini’s first post–Big Black band, the shortlived Rapeman, was playing a show in Clark Johnson’s basement in Evanston. All their friends were there, so Pajo and Brashear drove up for the party. But by the time they got there it was getting late and they were exhausted, so they opted to crash out rather than catch Rapeman. “We just went to sleep. We didn’t even care. But if you tell somebody that now, they’re like no way!, because now it has all this weight — to be part of this legendary thing.” I told Brashear that he could say as much for his own band. “Pretty much,” he said. “History adds weight to things.”
When Spiderland was released in March of 1990, it was noticed by almost no one. The music press wasn’t interested in writing articles about Slint; even a hundred words in a zine’s densely packed reviews section was hard to come by. One review did get noticed, however: Steve Albini, once again, raved about Slint, this time in the pages of the British magazine Melody Maker. Packing his review with 600 words of ebullient praise, he wrote,
In its best state, rock music invigorates me, changes my mood, triggers introspection or envelopes me with sheer sound. Spiderland does all those things, simultaneously and in turns, more than any records I can think of in five years.
Spiderland is, unfortunately, Slint’s swansong [sic], the band having succumbed to the internal pressures which eventually punctuate all bands’ biographies. It’s an amazing record though, 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.
In the face of Slint’s impending date with total obscurity, Albini’s review — as evidenced by the very book you’re reading — turned out to be prescient. Pajo recalled a conversation with Albini in 1989, when Slint were playing many of the Spiderland songs live, where Albini presaged what he would later put in print. “I remember Steve saying he never thought we’d be a big band but we’d be a really influential band. He said we were the sound of the ’90s — which in 1989 seemed like some far-off, unknown future. [I was] like, ‘No way man. What?’ It seemed so different from whatever was popular. I didn’t expect it.”
Albini’s review didn’t start a revolution, but it did spark a kind of whisper campaign. In the pre-blog era of the early ’90s, Spiderland’s success was due to honest-to-God word of mouth. No one in the band realized that people were imbuing Spiderland with any real significance until a few years later, 1993 or ’94, when they noticed their royalty checks from Touch and Go were still coming in. They weren’t big checks, but they were checks. Spiderland hadn’t quite disappeared into the bargain bin. Slint started getting name-dropped by other bands in interviews. Critics started using terms like “post-rock,” “math rock,” and “slowcore,” citing Spiderland as an example in each case. More and more bands started cropping up who employed an unadorned, slow, quiet sound — maybe with spoken word over top — often juxtaposed against ripping chaos.
Though Spiderland had come out a few months ahead of Nevermind, Ten, and the grunge explosion, its impact didn’t surface until a few years later, when many formerly underground bands — Pavement, Jawbox, Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, and more — were jumping into the mainstream. Where did that leave the underground? Coincidence or not, many young bands latched onto Spiderland at this time. In this sense perhaps “post-grunge,” rather than “post-rock,” is a more accurate descriptor for Spiderland’s influence in the ’90s. Nirvana brought the noisy crunch of the late-’80s underground to the mainstream. In an era when the schism between punk and popular was still deeply, proudly, self-consciously felt, many in the underground couldn’t reference the Stooges or the Clash without risking the appearance of being no more than Alterna-wannabes. The cold detachment of Slint’s clean guitars, their subverted vocals, their dramatic juxtapositions — more exaggerated than, say, a Pixies chorus — was like an avenue out of the sound being co-opted by the major labels. If the mainstream, through Nirvana and Green Day, was going to scavenge four-chord punk, feedback-laden noise-rock, and fuck-you slacker attitude, then the punkest thing to do was to turn off your distortion pedal, slow your tempo, and speak in paragraphs rather than shout in slogans. It was a total effacement of personality, statement of intent, and accessibility.
Louisville’s Rodan was probably the first and most obvious descendant of Slint. Their epic “Everyday World of Bodies,” from 1994’s Rusty, is like a catalogue of every technique Slint employed on Spiderland — dynamics, harmonics, story-lyrics, all the way down to the cathartic scream at the end, “I will be there!” rather than “I miss you!” Washington band Codeine traveled to Louisville to record their final album, The White Birch, released in 1994. Other bands gravitated toward the sound as the 1990s progressed: Seattle’s Engine Kid, Austin’s Bedhead, San Francisco’s A Minor Forest, North Carolina’s Seam, Duluth’s Low, San Diego’s Tristeza. Louisville, in the interim, flirted briefly with being a “Next Seattle” thanks to a New York Times profile on the local scene, as more and more bands cropped up from under Slint’s growing shadow: June of 44, the Sonora Pine, Rachel’s, and Palace, along with McMahan’s the For Carnation and Pajo’s Papa M. Now living in Chicago, Pajo hooked up with Tortoise — a band that was a cottage industry for the second half of the ’90s, spawning more side projects than was possible to keep up with.2 Labels like Drag City, Quarterstick, Thrill Jockey, and Touch and Go were largely sustained by a collective of bands with connections to the Chicago–Louisville axis that could be traced back to Slint, if not to Squirrel Bait. Spiderland’s DNA coursed through a huge swathe of the underground. The formula made its way out of the US, showing up in British bands like Hood and Scottish acts like Arab Strap and Mogwai. Mogwai’s 1997 album Young Team made its Slint-like dynamics ever more pronounced, a trend taken even further with Canadian collective Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s 1998 debut F#A#∞ and still further on their 1999 EP Slow Riot for a New Zerø Kanada. Dramatic dynamic shifts had, by the end of the decade, become de rigueur for so many indie rock bands, finally taken to ethereal heights by Iceland’s Sigur Rós on their 1999 album Ágætis Byrjun.
By the twenty-first century, the post-rock trend in indie rock had become less overtly popular. Mogwai and Sigur Rós had mostly abandoned their peaks and valleys, while many of the other most obvious Slint imitators had disbanded and faded from memory. Writing for the New Yorker in 2005, Sasha Frere-Jones keyed in on why, to Slint’s credit, the genre spawned by Spiderland did not take hold:
[Spiderland] was partly responsible for the enervation and increasing insularity of independent rock music during the nineties, a decade in which hip-hop, teen pop, and dance-hall, by contrast, became ever more formally omnivorous and pleasurable. The problem was that Slint did not create a simple, easily imitated beat like Bo Diddley, or an elemental song like the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the U.K.,” which anyone could learn to play. Slint — or “Spiderland,” because the two had become interchangeable — was like that grilled-cheese sandwich bearing the face of the Virgin Mary: an unlikely and irreproducible marvel.
Yet in some ways some of the ingredients to Spiderland — the unadorned sound, the complicated rhythms, the moody atmospheres, and yes, the dynamics — have become so ingrained in the way so many bands make their music, it’s impossible to really identify whether Spiderland, specifically, still resonates today, or if contemporary bands are reaching toward Slint’s own antecedents or descendants.
In the end it doesn’t matter. All the better if the clutch of bands trading in Slintisms in the ’90s have since disbanded, and that bands of the twenty-first century have filtered Spiderland’s best traits through a prism of other influences. Meanwhile Spiderland remains, two decades later, singular and utterly affecting. Nothing sounded quite like Spiderland when
Slint created it in 1990. Nothing sounds quite like it today.
* * *
When I visited Louisville in the fall of 2009 I took a drive out to Utica Quarry. As I followed the road into town, my eyes caught small signs posted at every intersection pointing the way to “Quarry Bluff.” Driving along the Ohio, the signs led me up an inclined road culminating at an imposing brick wall embedded into a hill, “Quarry Bluff Estates” emblazoned in gold letters across an ebony backing. The road curved past the sign and from my window I could see the lake come into view below. I was on the cliffs which rise behind the four heads on the album cover I’d known for roughly half my life. Ringing the top of the quarry were a smattering of ornate McMansions dotted with empty lots still for sale. The neighborhood landscaping was in progress, the streets and cul-de-sacs still half-formed. From my vantage point I had dramatic views of the quarry lake to one side, the Ohio River to the other, where the auburn treetops of Louisville lined the opposite bank.
I followed another road down to the lake itself, quietly secluded on all sides by the bluffs. More houses lined the water, small docks built into their backyards so the families could take leisurely boat rides — maybe the kids could go for a swim. It was the perfect place to create memories.
1 Though no recordings of the original Squirrel Bait trio exist, Grubbs’s vocal delivery in his later band, Bastro — short shouts à la the Minutemen’s D. Boon — likely gives a good hint at what the original formation sounded like. Hearing the Nearest Door demos, it’s easy to imagine Grubbs’s monotone, shouty delivery over many of the tracks.
2 It’s impossible to draw a sonic line from Squirrel Bait to Slint, but one can do it with Grubbs’s output. Skag Heaven is an obvious maturation from Squirrel Bait; the mathy sound of “Kick the Cat,” which appears on Skag Heaven and is one of the last songs the band wrote, anticipates the more complicated style of playing Grubbs would stake out with Bastro; “Recidivist,” which appears twice on Bastro’s third album, Sing the Troubled Beast — once as a rocker, once as an instrumental solo piano piece — seems to point toward the more deconstructed nature of music he would create in Gastr del Sol; which in turn led to the avant-garde music he makes today.
3 The Detroit show was put on by none other than Tesco Vee and Corey Rusk, the once and future impresarios (respectively) of Touch and Go. According to Pajo, they did not actually meet Rusk at the show.
4 Maurice was hardly the last Louisville would hear of Garrison and Bucayu. Within a couple of years they would form Kinghorse — arguably the most legendary Louisville band of its era, as far as locals are concerned. Their local following was positively huge, and they were soon signed to Caroline Records. Their debut album was produced by none other than Glenn Danzig. Due to trouble with their label, the record never really got its due, and Kinghorse broke up by the mid ’90s. Still, they loom large in Louisville’s collective memory — larger than Slint.
1 The story inevitably raises the question, where did Walford get the name for his fish? But Pajo insists there is no deeper meaning. “Sometime in the ’80s I was at Guitar Emporium in Louisville and an employee asked me the name of my band. When I said Slint he didn’t bat an eye and replied ‘Oh, I get it: slut, bitch, and cunt all in one word.’ I thought it was hilarious but it wasn’t our intention!”
2 Ironically, much of “Kent” was written by Buckler.
1 “. . . I think I indulged a selfish part of my personality during the making of [Surfer Rosa]. I don’t think that I regarded the band as significantly as I should have. And I felt at the time like I was making a better record for the band. I recognize now that what I was doing was actually warping their record to suit myself. And I think that having gone through that experience and recognize that impulse in myself I’ve been able to weed it out a little better. Which means that I’ve gotten better over time at doing things in the band’s best interest rather than doing things to amuse myself. And being perfectly frank, there were things that I did while making that record that I did to amuse myself and I don’t think it speaks well of me. I think that portrays a weak part of my personality at the time.” (Frank and Ganz, p. 107)
1 Bitch Magnet is a band that has never really gotten its proper share of credit for its influence on the early 1990s scene that developed in the Midwest. Sooyoung Park, the band’s primary songwriter, would later go on to form the better-known (and quieter) Seam, but Bitch Magnet was experimenting with dynamics, atmosphere, and complex time signatures concurrent with Slint. 1989’s Umber featured a couple of forays into quieter territory, while their 1990 swan song, Ben Hur — featuring David Grubbs on second guitar, as well as a guest appearance by Britt Walford on guitar for one track — in some ways feels like a missing link between the metal-inclined Tweez and the epic dynamics of Spiderland.
2 Astute ears may notice that McMahan speaks a couple of lines in two verses; Pajo told me McMahan took those lines because he wrote those lyrics.
1 According to Pajo the band received a number of letters, most of which they did not bother to open since Slint had broken up. Well after the fact, however, someone in the band realized that one letter came from none other than Polly Jean Harvey.
2 It might be worth noting that Tortoise, which became a kind of clearing house for so many post-rock projects, had more ties to Louisville than Pajo’s brief tenure. The group was born in part from a collaboration between John McEntire and Bundy K. Brown, both previously two-thirds of David Grubbs’s Gastr del Sol and Bastro.
Sources
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“Crunch Gods from Kentucky Call it a Day: The Saga of Squirrel Bait.” Pope, (1987). Available at http://www.swanfungus.com/2008/09/squirrel-bait-1984-demos-1987-interview.html (accessed August 11, 2010).
DeRosa, Jon. “Unholy Passion.” Pitchfork, (March 6, 2005) Available at http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/5980-unholy-passion/ (accessed September 12, 2010).
Frank, Josh and Ganz, Caryn. Fool the World: The Oral History of a Band Called Pixies. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, (2006).
Frere-Jones, Sasha. “Slow Fade.” New Yorker, April 11, (2005).
Guntzel, Jeff. “Invisible Histories: Slint (Part 1). “Originally published in Punk Planet 66, (2005). Available at http://mog.com/jsguntzel/blog/20790 (accessed August 11, 2010).
Jefferson County Public Schools. Brown School Profile. Available at http://www.jefferson.k12.ky.us/schools/High/brown/mission_history.html (accessed August 11, 2010).
LaGambina, Gregg. “Finding Spiderland.” FILTER 14, (February 2005).
Leland, John. “Squirrel Bait: Squirrel Bait.” SPIN 1, no. 10, (February 1986): 31.
———. “White Dopes on Punk.” SPIN 2, no. 1, (April 1986): 11.
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Miller, Jamie. Interview with Kinghorse. Highlands Lowlife 1, (Summer 1995). Available at http://www.louisvillehardcore.com/bands/kinghorse/interviews/lowlife.html (accessed August 11, 2010).
Noise Pollution. Unpublished interview with Sean Garrison, January 1998. Available at http://www.louisvillehardcore.com/bands/kinghorse/interviews/unpublished.html (accessed August 11, 2010).
Ortenzi, Rob. “The Oral History of Slint.” Alternative Press 201, (April 2005).
Pajo, David. “The Day of the Rat.” Pink Hollers, (September 28, 2008). Available at http://pinkhollers.blogspot.com/2008/09/day-of-the-rat.html (accessed September 12, 2010).
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Wheeler, Drew and Welch, Mike. “Garage Sale.” SPIN 1, no. 8, (December 1985): 22–5.
Also available in the series:
1. Dusty in Memphis by Warren Zanes
2. Forever Changes by Andrew Hultkrans
3. Harvest by Sam Inglis
4. The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society by Andy Miller
5. Meat Is Murder by Joe Pernice
6. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by John Cavanagh
7. Abba Gold by Elisabeth Vincentelli
8. Electric Ladyland by John Perry
9. Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott
10. Sign ‘O’ the Times by Michaelangelo Matos
11. The Velvet Underground and Nico by Joe Harvard
12. Let It Be by Steve Matteo
13. Live at the Apollo by Douglas Wolk
14. Aqualung by Allan Moore
15. OK Computer by Dai Griffiths
16. Let It Be by Colin Meloy
Slint's Spiderland Page 11
