by Christopher J. Lee (@joonhai)
To be provocative—and for the sake of argument—I will go out on a limb and say Tweez is as important of a Slint record as Spiderland. Like most Slint fans I listened to the latter first, and the memory of that first listen remains a singular experience. Spiderland’s reputation was sealed with a legendary review by Steve Albini in Melody Maker, all but securing its canonical underground status. “In 10 years’ time, it will be a landmark and you’ll have to scramble to buy a copy then,” Albini wrote. “Beat the rush.” And to avert any ambiguity, he left a rating of “Ten fucking stars.”
Spiderland was indeed special. It served as a secret handshake. You entered a different listening room never to return. Like many fans, I first heard Spiderland years after its initial release, four in my case, sometime in 1995. Given the quiet breakup of Slint, it was the kind of LP that most people came to slowly, especially pre-streaming. Scandalously, I had it on CD—the album sleeve at the time (famously) stated, “This recording is meant to be listened to on vinyl.” The name “Slint” itself was enigmatic, both metal and menacing, a word that appeared to have no precedent in the English language. The peerless PJ Harvey nonetheless looked up to Slint, reportedly having responded to their album sleeve query for female vocalists. I remain convinced that the cover of Rid of Me, of Harvey emerging from the bath, is an implicit homage the infamous Spiderland cover photograph taken by Will Oldham.
Spiderland today retains its unusual gravitational pull; a 2014 box set released with demos and remastered tracks accompanied an excellent documentary film by Lester Bangs. That film, Breadcrumb Trail, revealed much about the origins of the band and album through interviews with longtime band members Brian McMahan (vocals, guitars), Britt Walford (drums, vocals), David Pajo (guitars), and Todd Brashear (bass), and producer Brian Paulson. David Yow of the Jesus Lizard, Ian MacKaye of Fugazi, and Albini make appearances, along with Ethan Buckler, Slint’s original bassist who appeared on their debut, Tweez. Bangs managed to show how the album became an object of obsession for many fans, and it becomes clear how much artistic ground the members of Slint had covered even before they came together.
In the 1980s, Louisville was a nascent hotbed. As a teenager, McMahan had already been a member of Squirrel Bait, a hardcore band with a melodic pop heart similar to Hüsker Dü, alongside Walford and David Grubbs, another later luminary of post-rock. Somewhat remarkably, Walford and McMahan had previously established a hardcore band in the sixth grade called Languid and Flaccid, signaling both their preternatural ability and wry sense of humor. More important to Slint, David Pajo and Walford formed the short-lived Maurice in high school, recording a demo for Glenn Danzig called The First Shall Be Last, finally released in 2011—an absurdly appealing bit of trash metal that still slaps.
Listening to Tweez (35th Anniversary Edition) brings these connections into sharper focus, even if Spiderland reflected a great leap forward. First recorded in 1987 by Albini and released two years later in 1989, the original LP has been remastered by Bob Weston of Shellac, paralleling his work for the Spiderland box set. Also included is an alternate version of Tweez renamed Tweez (tweethan mix) after Ethan Buckler, who hated Albini’s tweaking of the original album, specifically the inclusion of studio banter from the recording sessions. Remixed by Anne Gauthier, Tweez (tweethan mix) consists of the demos prior to recording at Electrical Audio. The result is an LP that is cleaner, if also flatter in tone. It imparts a more serious and frankly humorless vision for the album. While it is easy to be sympathetic to Buckler’s annoyance, so severe it resulted in his departure from Slint to start the indie dance band King Kong, it is equally understandable why Albini fiddled with the relatively thin material in order to give it a dose of experimentation and levity. Albini’s use of studio conversation and intra-band shenanigans on Tweez corresponds the repartee between Kim Deal and Black Francis found on Surfer Rosa, the recording of which Albini helmed the very same year in 1987.
Returning to an earlier point, while it may be difficult to see the musical connections between Tweez and Spiderland, the former album does reveal in rough form the furtive origins of post-rock, namely the influences of metal and hardcore, but with equal emphasis on sidewinding instrumentals and time signature experimentation. These elements are where Pajo and Walford shine, with each showing off in different ways. From Tweez’s bold first track, “Ron,” which starts with McMahan’s shrug of an opening, “Oh, um, alright,” Walford and Pajo structure the entire LP with the former’s emphatic percussion counterposed by the latter’s guitar sheen. That said, the album never quite settles down into a consistent mood like its disciplined successor.
Tweez goes in numerous directions: at times serious, at times ridiculous, and at times incoherent. In his liner notes, Buckler aptly summarizes, “But what was Slint? Half hardcore and half something else.” The hardcore keeps you listening while the something else leaves you wanting more. For example, “Nan Ding” (all the songs on the original LP are named after their parents, plus Walford’s dog, Rhoda) is an art-metal instrumental with muddled band banter in the background. “Kent” starts as a goofy dance instrumental and likewise ends with an extended art-metal coda. “Darlene” is a spoken word ballad of sorts about teenage sex, and “Warren” approximates an homage to Danzig. The tracks “Carol” and “Charlotte” are easily the best on Tweez due to their casual malice, heavy riffs, and pummeling percussion. The closer “Rhoda” similarly achieves a culminating grandeur with its drum and guitar interplay in the final minute.
Tweez and Spiderland are worlds apart with two different lineups and two levels of maturity. They started out as kids and then became older kids. The main critique that can be made of Spiderland is that it is too self-serious for its own good; the booklet for the 2014 boxset concludes with a photo of Pajo, Brashear, and Walford as teenagers with the avant-garde composer Philip Glass. Tweez is an antidote to the idea that Slint were too high-minded and pretentious. Albini captures it best in the liner notes for this reissue, completed before his death last April. He deserves the final word:
“When I listen to Tweez I hear the youthfulness—the hangouts, the jokes, the farts, the laughter, the unaffected way kids entertain themselves when left to their own devices. All of that in support of the music, which fucking rules. It’s weird and bears the scars of its era—the chorus-pedal and transistorized sound of the guitars, the digital reverb on the drums—but the music is unique and beautiful, and knowing it was made by kids is startling.”