Slint
Spiderland

THE REVIEW

"Don't worry about me, I've got a bed. I've got a Christmas tree inside my head..."
(Slint - Kent)

Forty minutes. That’s the duration of one of the most brutal murders in music history. Yes, because who would have imagined that Slint, four young guys from Louisville, Kentucky, would indelibly mark the rock of the next ten (and more) years? Probably no one. The fact remains that after the excellent Tweez, a very "Albini" album released in 1989 by Jennifer Hartman Records, they give us Spiderland, and, as already mentioned, history changes.

Explosion becomes implosion, the violence of hardcore an exasperated slowness, the singing becomes imperceptible speaking, only to disappear entirely. Thus, on tiptoe, we enter the era of post-rock.
In the six tracks of Spiderland, in fact, the four Slint members outline a new way of making music, create a new model, promptly ignored at the time, which is perfectly imprinted in the slow and rhythmic beats of the initial "Breadcrumb Trail", in "Nosferatu Man", the only link with the post-hardcore of the early Dischord years, in the suspended "Don, Aman" and its infinitely repeated chords (six disorienting minutes, where total immobility reigns and the constant anticipation of an explosion that will never come...), in the emotional depth of the almost slowcore "Washer", one of the highest peaks of the album, and then reaching the instrumental rock of "For Dinner..." and the conclusion with "Good Morning, Captain", featuring vocalist and guitarist Brian McMahan’s spoken word and his oriental-inspired suggestions.
Stop at this point, the show ends, the curtain falls on Slint, who would soon break up, leaving us only an EP with two short instrumental pieces, posthumously released in 1994 by Sub Pop. Literally ignored by everyone.
Only years later, when various bands like Tortoise, Mogwai, and Explosions In The Sky would appear on the music scene, would the masses of post-rock enthusiasts finally understand everything: in Spiderland, in 1991, it was all already there.

Today, fourteen years later, Slint reunites for the All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival. Will they record a new album? Will they leave their mark on the music of the coming years? And, above all, what does a band that reunites after more than ten years of inactivity still have to say? All questions that will soon find their answers. Just remember, for now, that in the early '90s, four young men from Kentucky indeed changed music. And this, I think, is more than enough for us...