Slint’s Spiderland (2010)

With this title in the 33-1/3 series I was at something of a disadvantage because I didn’t know the album until about the time I read the book. In my little 33-1/3 project, I started with some of the most obvious titles and eventually settled into polling the internet at large with google searches on a periodic basis. This one by Scott Tennent has a reputation for being well-researched and written, which is true. Tennent has no Wikipedia article, but publisher Bloomsbury’s bio puts him at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as a senior writer who runs a blog on the side, now apparently defunct (Pretty Goes With Pretty). Lots of names associated with Slint and Spiderland were well familiar to me: Steve Albini, Gerard Cosloy, Homestead, Touch and Go. The ‘80s indie scene in Chicago reached out and interacted with Slint’s hometown Louisville as well as mine in Minneapolis. A lot of Tennent’s work is the story of how Slint came together, by luck and happenstance in the middle of a vibrant time for, uh, post-rock. All the members of Slint played with lots of different bands, and for that matter their two albums don’t entirely even sound like the same band. They were together more or less for no more than three years, made two albums, flew apart, attempted reunions, flew apart again, made more reunions. Slint has roots in punk-rock by way of altern-America at large but they’re far more musicianly than I’d ever been led to understand. In a lot of ways it’s hard for me to believe that Albini went for this so much. Tennent does a good job telling how the band and album came together, and makes a respectable turn when he goes through the album track by track. I’m less inclined to believe him when he gets to the importance and influence of Spiderland, but maybe he's right. He uses the word “scene” a lot like I do above for small groups of people interacting obscurely, but again, this could all be true. If you’re already inclined like me to accept Albini and Husker Du and many of the other figures here as key players, then you likely know Slint and this album and how you think it all rates. I’m still trying to figure it out and appreciate a lot of the information I picked up here.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.