2008 Woodie Awards
Slint Reunited
Mordechai Shinefield
Issue date: 3/29/05 Section: Arts & Culture
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Unless you devour music magazines, you probably missed the most intense music news of the last couple months. It flew right under the radar, caught only in the underground press and obscure fanzines. Newspapers advertised it, but unless you knew what you were looking at, you may have turned the black inked page without a second glance. Slint reunited to play a small tour. To intellectually understand the impact of Slint on the music world would require intimate knowledge of a number of obscure artifices of modern punk. Some knowledge of the influence of Slint upon emocore and hardcore would be in order. Familiarity with the incestuous music scenes promulgated in communities like Washington D.C. and Louisville wouldn't hurt. The musical talent requires deconstruction, and an evaluation of the impact that the guitar contributes to the album would be on the table for discussion. If what you're looking for, though, is to emotionally and viscerally understand Slint, all you need is a little under 40 minutes; the length of Spiderland.
Slint's second LP is still shockingly original and breathtaking more than a decade after recording. The songs can be evaluated with as rigorous as methodology as personification, trying to decode whom is the personality singing the songs. Will Oldham's voice on the record is haunting, but the stories he tells are sophisticated enough to be read as something separate from himself. He isn't just writing about his own tales of misery and woe, but something subtler.
"I know it's dark outside/ don't be afraid/ everytime I ever cried from fear/ was just a mistake that I made/ Wash yourself in your tears/ and build your church/ on the strength of your faith."
If your exposure to misery in music is limited to Dashboard Confessional's The Places You Have Come to Fear, then you haven't been washed over by the harsh beauty of Spiderland. I've heard it described as music to accompany the day after the apocalypse, when you've discovered that you're the only person alive. Where doom and Black Sabbath play to the moment of destruction, Slint play to the headache and heartache when you realize that everyone you've ever loved is gone. They personify the insane capacity to feel pain in loneliness. Carrabba has never reached this level of emotional depths. The purpose of the comparison isn't to insult neo-emo music, but merely to illustrate that the word visceral isn't hyperbole when discussing Slint. The music lodges into your gut and messes with your perceptions of reality.
Slint's second LP is still shockingly original and breathtaking more than a decade after recording. The songs can be evaluated with as rigorous as methodology as personification, trying to decode whom is the personality singing the songs. Will Oldham's voice on the record is haunting, but the stories he tells are sophisticated enough to be read as something separate from himself. He isn't just writing about his own tales of misery and woe, but something subtler.
"I know it's dark outside/ don't be afraid/ everytime I ever cried from fear/ was just a mistake that I made/ Wash yourself in your tears/ and build your church/ on the strength of your faith."
If your exposure to misery in music is limited to Dashboard Confessional's The Places You Have Come to Fear, then you haven't been washed over by the harsh beauty of Spiderland. I've heard it described as music to accompany the day after the apocalypse, when you've discovered that you're the only person alive. Where doom and Black Sabbath play to the moment of destruction, Slint play to the headache and heartache when you realize that everyone you've ever loved is gone. They personify the insane capacity to feel pain in loneliness. Carrabba has never reached this level of emotional depths. The purpose of the comparison isn't to insult neo-emo music, but merely to illustrate that the word visceral isn't hyperbole when discussing Slint. The music lodges into your gut and messes with your perceptions of reality.
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