Spiderland
Spiderland is the second and final studio album by the American rock band Slint. It was released by Touch and Go Records on March 27, 1991. Slint's lineup at the time of recording comprised Brian McMahan on vocals and guitar, David Pajo on guitar, Todd Brashear on bass guitar and Britt Walford on drums. Spiderland was engineered by Brian Paulson and recorded over four days in August 1990. The music and vocal melodies were composed throughout the summer of 1990, while lyrics were written in-studio.
"Good Morning, Captain" redirects here. For another song with this lyric, see Mule Skinner Blues.Spiderland
Forming in 1986 in Louisville, Kentucky, Slint had met as teenagers playing in the Midwestern punk scene but soon diverged sonically from their hardcore punk roots. By the time they recorded Spiderland in late 1990, the band had developed a complex, idiosyncratic sound characterized by atypical rhythmic meters, harmonic dissonance and irregular song structures. McMahan's vocal delivery on the record alternates between spoken word, singing and shouting. The lyrics are presented in a narrative style and cover themes such as unease, social anxiety, loneliness, and despair.
Slint broke up shortly before the album's release due to McMahan's depression. In the US, Spiderland initially attracted little critical attention and sold poorly. However, a warm reception from UK music papers and gradually increasing sales in subsequent years helped it develop a significant cult following. Spiderland is widely regarded as foundational to the 1990s post-rock and math rock movements, and is cited by critics as a milestone of indie and experimental rock, inspiring a myriad of subsequent artists. Slint reunited in 2005 to perform the album in its entirety across three international tours.
Production and recording[edit]
Throughout the summer of 1990, the band practiced the music for six new songs McMahan and Walford had written for Slint's second album. The songs were recorded in August 1990 with producer Brian Paulson, who was known for his "live" recording style and minimal takes. Paulson later said that the recording "was weird... because I remember sitting there, and I just knew there was something about it. I've never heard anything like this."[11] McMahan and Walford wrote the lyrics at the last minute while in studio,[11] although they had worked out the vocal melodies in advance using recordings of practice sessions and a four-track.[12] The album mostly explored themes of coming of age and anxiety about the approach of adulthood, and McMahan did not want the lyrics or vocal style to be heard by others until the actual recordings. He said: "I did not want to rehearse the vocals...it was a one-shot, cathartic experience."[13]
The recording sessions were intense, fraught, and often difficult. According to AllMusic, they were "traumatic...and one more piece of evidence supporting the theory that band members had to be periodically institutionalized during the completion of the album."[14] Rumors circulated that at least one member of Slint had checked into a psychiatric hospital. Walford later said that there was no truth to such claims, although the band was "definitely trying to be serious about things, pretty intense, which made recording the album kinda stressful."[15] The recording was completed in four days.[11]
Music[edit]
The album's guitar work is noted for its roomy sound,[16] angular rhythms, dramatically alternating dynamic shifts, and irregular time signatures. McMahan's singing style varies among mumbling, spoken word, strained shouting, and a written-narrative style. Will Hermes of Spin summarized the album's sound as "mid-'70s King Crimson gone emo: screeching guitar chords and gorgeous note-spinning in odd-metered instrumentals speckled with words both spoken and sung".[17] Melody Maker described the music as "structurally and in tone", saying that the band "recall[s] Television circa Marquee Moon and Crazy Horse, whose simplicity they echo and whose style they most certainly do not".[18]
The lyrics are usually narrative in style, and have been described as "eerie" and having "peculiar syntax".[19] Both the vocal melodies and words were written by McMahan and Walford after the basic tracks had been recorded during practice sessions, and often were not heard by Pajo and Brashear until their final recording in studio. The vocal additions often pulled the songs in new directions, with examples being "Good Morning, Captain" and "Washer".[20] McMahan was never comfortable taking the role of vocalist and only did so because nobody else in the band would. He considerably increases his range on "Spiderland", incorporating both his earlier whispered and shouting approaches with what Tennent describes as conventional, "actual singing".[21]
The opening track, "Breadcrumb Trail", describes a day at a carnival with a fortune-teller. The song is built from complex guitar arrangement with sharp transitions, during which the guitar fluctuates between a clean-sounding riff with harmonics in the verse to heavy and high pitched distortion in the chorus.[22] "Nosferatu Man" is the second track and was inspired by the 1922 German Expressionist silent film Nosferatu. Its verse includes a dissonant guitar riff which uses high-pitched notes similar to those in "Breadcrumb Trail" and a drumbeat centered on snare and toms. The chorus, featuring "jagged" distorted guitar and a beat with "thrashing cymbals with quick drum fills", segues into an extended jam before the song ends with 30 seconds of feedback.[23]
Walford sings and plays lead guitar on "Don, Aman", a deliberate anagram of Madonna.[16] Delivered in a hushed tone, the song's ambiguous lyrics depict the thoughts of an "isolated soul" before, during, and after an evening at a bar.[24] The tempo quickens as the song develops, becoming loud and distorted at its peak, before slowing back to the original speed.[24] "Washer" is the album's longest track, and features a low volume intro with guitar and cymbals before the rest of the band joins in the recording. The song builds until the final verse, when the tension is broken by loud distortion, followed by a lengthy outro.[25] Pajo has said he is particularly proud of the song's one-note guitar solo, admitting that "at that point in my life, if someone asked me to do a solo, I would do the exact opposite of what a solo usually is. Instead of playing a bunch of notes, I would just play one, though I did some decorative stuff around it there. There’re some cool, weird things in that song".[19]
The instrumental "For Dinner..." begins with a quiet section of "brooding chords throb[bing] with the occasional rumble of muted toms and bass drum", the song cycles through sections of building and releasing tension.[26] The guitars employ standard tuning, and do not use effects pedals.[19] The closing song, "Good Morning, Captain", has been described as a tribute to the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner[26] but the band have denied this.[16] The song, which Pajo says is his favorite from the album,[19] is built from a two-chord guitar structure, described as a "spindly, tight riff", and a "jerky" drumbeat.[26] During the recording of the final chorus, McMahan became physically sick due to the strain of yelling over the guitars.[15] David Peschek of The Guardian compared "Good Morning, Captain" to Led Zeppelin for its epic scope, though not its bleak mood, writing: "the extraordinary [song] is [Slint's] "Stairway to Heaven", if it's possible to imagine Stairway to Heaven bleached of all bombast."[27]
Spiderland (remastered)
The album packaging omitted the band members' names.[84] The lineup credits below are adapted from The Great Alternative & Indie Discography (1999) by Martin C. Strong.[85] Walford performed vocals and guitar on "Don, Aman", accompanied by Pajo on guitar.[86]