The following is a Designated Cheerleader piece by @polytropos5 for the Best Album of 1991 tournament. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you follow the link to vote in the tournament. Thanks!
Maybe everyone feels this way about where they come from, but Louisvillians are awfully proud. Maybe everyone believes that whether others do or don’t know it, their town is the greatest, and singular, and omnipresent in its effects, even for those who don’t know. Maybe everyone thinks they have their own Muhammad Ali, their own Hunter S. Thompson, their own Hill sisters, authors of “Happy Birthday to You.” Between these heroes and the Kentucky Derby and bourbon, Louisvillians think you don't have what they have. These mythologies hide ugly truths. Louisville has always been racially segregated; Breonna Taylor’s death was too predictable. Gambling and whiskey ruin lives, often together. And: Louisvillians think you don't have what they have, and they think there’s plenty you wouldn’t have if it weren’t for them.
This is how Louisvillians feel about Slint’s Spiderland. The album was recorded in August of 1990 when Slint’s members, all of whom grew up in Louisville, were in their early 20s. Slint’s forebears belonged to the city’s punk scene, which at the time was a mixture of metal and D.C. hardcore, with a healthy dose of Chicago and some unspoken love of bluegrass sprinkled in at the edges. Spiderland lasts in no small part because it does not obviously belong to any specific genre yet carved the space for several that came in its wake, including post rock and math rock. This makes the record influential. It is treasured, however, for the depth of emotion it creates and reveals behind its musical complexity.
As with any canonical record, the track ordering produces a deliberate narrative arc. “Breadcrumb Trail” begins the journey in 7/4 time with harmonics, a repetitive melody, and muted vocals, all of which combine to feel at once safe and unsettling, like being at the local carnival that the lyrics describe. This is not daytime music. At the end of the first verse the tale turns to riding a roller coaster, and the music obliges; the listener clasps the hand of the stranger riding the coaster with them and says goodbye to the ground. The rhythm has shifted to 6/8, the drums and the guitar have become a sonic assault. The intensity continues relentlessly for a few minutes--maybe not quite as long as it takes to ride the Beast, but close--and it eventually resolves to where it started, 7/4 and hypnotic again.
“Nosferatu Man,” as its name might suggest, does not give the listener a chance to catch their breath but rather goes deeper into the darkness. It opens in 5/4 time, again challenging the listener, jerking them as shrill harmonics pierce another circular melody. The creator of the YouTube channel “Anyone Can Play Guitar” (who recently uploaded an excellent video showing how to play the song) describes these rhythmic decisions as natural and musically justified, and they are, here and throughout the record, which is a key reason why this is not well described as math rock. The chorus shifts into 6/4 and veers close to metal, as befits a song called “Nosferatu Man.” Whereas “Breadcrumb Trail” makes quiet-to-loud transitions that are characteristic of so many 90s rock songs, “Nosferatu Man” attacks throughout.
“Don, Aman” thus comes as a surprise. There are no drums; there is no distortion until near the end of the song, and when the distortion finally comes it feels muffled. The darkness continues, but now the listener is not running from a monster. Instead, they are walking through a forest that is too quiet, or they are driving down a road with only the occasional street light. It is the perfect soundtrack for an ad for season six of Mad Men. I swear I saw that ad at some point, but maybe I imagined it so intensely that I have since mistaken imagination for memory. Within the arc of Spiderland, the song marks a transition. It opens with an odd time signature and shifts over the course of the song, so it belongs to side A, but its quietness prepares the way for the listener to flip the record.
When side B begins, the time signatures have finally given way to a familiar 4/4 nod, and the guitars are moody and brooding. The verses of “Washer” anticipate Low in their sadness and their rhythmic sparseness. This is the tie to “Don, Aman.” But whereas that song’s eventual crescendo is constrained, “Washer” builds to an explosion. Here, we have the template for some of the best songs by Seam, and Bedhead, and Rex, and and and. The song is a template for some of the most emotionally intense indie rock of the next decade.
The analogues to “For Dinner” on many records are filler tracks. It is almost inaudibly quiet in places. There are no lyrics; the time signature is once again straightforward; the mesmerising technique by the song’s end is a single chord that repeats for nearly a minute, sounding like Galaxie 500 covering Spacemen 3. The objective here is the same as “Ithaca” in Joyce’s Ulysses, a rest before the finale. That episode is not filler, and neither is this song. We all must catch our breath.
The opening, dissonant chords of “Good Morning, Captain” bring the brief respite to an end and tie the record’s threads together. It is the end of side B, and its rhythm is even. But it is also the end of the whole arc, which began with the playful fear of a rollercoaster ride and then moved deeper into loneliness through “Don, Aman” and “Washer.” Now we have the story of a captain who is staring at his life like a ship he has wrecked, longing to return to a time before he lost everyone he loved. Mogwai and Rodan, the other great Louisville band of the day, spring from this. The climax, the closing moments of the record, exceed even the end of “Washer.” Guitarist Brian McMahan famously had a nervous breakdown immediately after finishing Spiderland. Listening to the end of “Good Morning, Captain,” this is not hard to imagine.
The story of Spiderland has been told before. Lance Bangs made a fine documentary in 2014 that gives the record its due; Pitchfork awarded its reissue a 10/10 that same year with an informative and glowing review; Rolling Stone revisited it this spring; Steve Albini, who recorded Slint's earlier Tweeze, began it all with his write up in Melody Maker. The album’s cover is part of this story too, the picture from the quarry in Utica, Indiana shot by Will Oldham before the birth of Palace Brothers. The early Palace records confused listeners who knew that several members of Slint were in the band then; it didn’t sound like Slint. But then, nothing did, nor would anything again, not quite. Louisvillians think you’re wrong if you think your city is like theirs. Muhammad Ali wasn’t born in your city, and your city didn’t produce Spiderland.
