After a long Winter, Spring is finally here and with it comes the best releases of new music in 2021. It’s a big one full of lots of great music ranging from jazz, electronic, dance-punk, R&B, and more. Personally, I’m most excited for the collaborative album between electronic great Floating Points, jazz legend Pharoah Sanders, and the London Symphony Orchestra (which Four Tet is already claiming is the album of the year). However, there is a LOT to be excited about this week and we also heard announcements of new records coming from Andy Stott, black midi, and the Palehound / Jay Som collaboration called Bachelor. We also have two exciting reissues this week, one from Tame Impala and yet another archive release from Neil Young. Today is also the thirtieth anniversary of Slint’s legendary Spiderland.
Albums:
Floating Points / Pharoah Sanders / London Symphony Orchestra | Promises
serpentwithfeet | DEACON
Death from Above 1979 | Is 4 Lovers
Tune-Yards | sketchy.
Xiu Xiu | OH NO
Anna Fox Rochinski | Cherry
Real Estate | Half a Human [EP]
Tame Impala | Innerspeaker [10th Anniversary Box Set]
Neil Young | Young Shakespeare [Live album from 1971]
Songs
nasimiYu | “Secretsecret”
Beachy Head | “Destroy Us”
Dawn Richard | “Jacuzzi”
Andy Stott | “The beginning”
black midi | “John L”
Bachelor | “Stay in the Car”
Enumclaw | “Free Drop Billy”
Iceage | “Shelter Song”
Overmono | “Pieces of 8”
Paul McCartney | “Find My Way” (ft Beck)
BROCKHAMPTON | “BUZZCUT” (ft Danny Brown)
If you’re a Spotify user, you can listen to these songs (and more from 2021) here!
Slint’s Spiderland Turns 30
The landmark album from the Kentucky quartet was the group’s second and final record, one that would spark a reputation beyond any of the band member’s wildest dreams. For years, its legendary status would grow and it would later become known as a pioneering album for the Post-Rock genre, but it would also send ripples across the midwestern hardcore and underground scenes. Started when they were teenagers, the men in Slint crafted a kind of magic that was so underground that they rarely played shows, almost never headlined one, and rarely spoke to any kind of media (although I’m not sure there were many trying to cover the group). In their brief original run from 1986-1991, Slint were barely known outside of their own local scene, but in the thirty years since they first called it quits and released the triumphant Spiderland, the band’s fandom has grown and the record has become an essential recording of the ‘90s.
Mystery surrounds the album. From its eerie cover of four heads floating just above the water’s surface to the slow builds into explosive ruptures of guitar, the overall feeling conjured up by this album is uneasy tension. The guitars sound metallic, like rusted steel and the drums are dry and thick. In many ways, this record is like its cover. Stark and intimidating. From the opening notes, there is no sense of welcomeness here and on first listen, it’s challenging to not remain on edge through most of the album. After countless spins, that transitions into anticipation with each carefully calculated track unfolding in such a precise manner. At the time, not many others were making such dark, slow tempo music that also incorporated the intensity of hardcore and other DIY aesthetics.
Pinning down the genre of the magic at work here has been challenging since its release. Long, drawn out guitar hooks are accompanied by very steady drum rhythms before enough tension builds to find the song letting go and into a full, cataclysmic release. The majority of the record features a speak-sing style of vocal work. The delivery very much makes everything feel like a new version of story telling as an often deadpan voice distinctly articulates such vivid tales. A narrator voice to an imageless movie told over music. As more distortion fills the tracks, the vocal intensify to match and by the end of “Good Morning, Captain,” everything has become a screaming rage of frenzied despair.
It’s easy to find the common lineage that lead to bands like Mogwai or Godspeed You! Black Emperor developing similar approaches to loud, powerful ethereal rock that accelerates from more quiet beginnings. The shape-shifting sounds of Tortoise and more prolonged Sonic Youth jams also took notes from the valor and clamor of Spiderland. Slowcore elements are also abundant here and the swells of Codeine and Duster without question followed the path of Slint. Rodan’s phenomenal Rusty is perhaps the record that comes closest to reaching the excellence on display here and it makes perfect sense that it’s part of Touch & Go’s illustrious catalog.
Listening to Spiderland is going to a dark place and not something that everyone will find enjoyable. When the band made it, it took them to places that none of them cared to revisit and traumatized them enough to end the band just before they could’ve capitalized the most. By the middle part of the decade, the album had risen within indie circles and in the 2000s it garnered enough demand to finally see the group reunite for a brief tour. A reissue would come in 2014 as would another tour (which I was able to see in Brooklyn) and extended unreleased tracks as well as a documentary by Lester Bangs. Thirty years on and it’s heralded as one of the all time greats and one that transformed the underground for decades to come. Spiderland is a menacing collection of songs that evoke haunting and unsettling feelings, yet it has stood the test of time. It’s required listening and still the ruler of the underground.