the review on the record review site explains it like this:
"It's always a pleasure to review a classic album. When you consider that most albums are made by chimpanzees, it's always a treat to run across one that successfully channels an evocative mood through cerebral time signatures, strange made-up guitar chords, sympathetic instrumental interplay and innovative, harrowing melodies. I'm thinking specifically of The Eagles' Greatest Hits '71-'75, but many feel it would be inappropriate to devote the better half of this Slint review page to yet more praise for the Strandlund/Tempchin-penned "Already Gone" or the Tempchin-penned "Peaceful Easy Feeling," no matter how deserved such accolades might be (and ARE, although anyone with two ears could tell you that Tempchin contributed 200% more than Strandlund while receiving only 2/3rds the credit). Thus, I recur.
Nobody knows how Slint got good all of a sudden; it's one of the great unanswerable rock mysteries. You'd might as well ask a member of Queen whether Freddie Mercury was gay or not. It's simply something that we'll never know, and perhaps were never meant to know. But good they did, and get they were. The six lengthy tracks on Spiderland envelope the listener in a cold, damp blanket of desolate loneliness. Like music created by a bunch of emotionally numb yet incredibly talented people isolated in a cabin in the woods, these rainy, hopeless vignettes of sorrow, loss and fatigue paint the same suicidal portrait as the work of legendary Texas recluse Jandek -- but Slint can actually play their instruments! Also they're not completely insane.
Through the replacement of only one member (the bass player, who went on to form King Kong), the entire thinking mode of the band has changed. Although most of the vocals are still spoken word (except for one really poor excuse for singing that you kinda just have to deal with in life today, with terrorism), there is no confusion of intent or lack of purpose. The songs are built upon stark, emotionally bleak guitar hooks, occasionally interspersed with fleeting moments of hope (the 7/4-timed harmonics-driven riff that starts and closes "Breadcrumb Trail"), sick mental hospital creepiness (the unbalanced 5/4 hook that drives "Nosferatu Man") and mesmerizing atonal bass chords ("GOOD MORNING, CAPTAIN"!!!! "GOOD" fuck*ng "MORNING, CAPTAIN!" HAVE YOU FKCING HEARD THIS SONG??? IT'S FDKAKCING INMAZINGBLE!!!! I THINK IT WAS IN KIDS, A MOVIE THAT SUCKED!!!!). The guitar tones are smarter, fuller, and less stupid & immature. The band moves together as a unit, with never a moment wasted. Moments of math-rock (check out the noisy break in "Nosferatu Man," where the dude somehow sneaks two microsecond harmonics between careening blocks of chords - not once, but EVERY time they play it!), expanses of misery-ridden acoustic strumming, haunting late-Swans-style arpeggiated hooks, and finely-timed blasts of distorted blast-chords all play a role in this merciless defeat of the human spirit (that RULES!!!!!)."
anyway. i really love it.
I don't find it boring. some people, however, find it mind-numbingly boring.
also: I can't get into Pinback. I don't know. My crazy uncle (ie: my one "cool" relative who likes punk rock and such) gave me their cd two Christmases ago.
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Topic: What'cha Listening Too (New for 2006) (Read 38895 times)