Saturday, August 18, 2007

Slint - "Glenn/Rhoda" EP


Woo! Going to see Slint in Dublin tonight, or more specifically, 'Slint Performing Spiderland'. Should be a good gig...



This isn't Spiderland, although if you want to find out more about that amazing album you can read this. This self-titled EP contains only two songs, 'Rhoda', a reworking of a song from Tweez, and 'Glenn', a previously unreleased song presumably dating from around the same time (apparently, all the songs on Tweez were named after pets and family members).



There are two reasons why I love this EP. They are called, basically, 'Glenn', and 'Rhoda'. Let me explain...

Firstly, this EP almost perfectly bridges the fairly disparate sounds of Tweez (a lo-fi, desultory and crunchingly metallic album) and Spiderland (a twisting, epic and subtle masterpiece of post-rock). 'Glenn' rejuvenates the minimalistic sound of Tweez, tightening it up and adding an extra dimension of tension to the instrumental style. The song quickly builds up into a crescendo, which almost immediately goes nowhere, except to introduce an ominous humming sound... part reminiscent of the antagonistic noise of Tweez, part prescient of the eerie claustrophobia of Spiderland.

Secondly, the music of this EP was for me the most 'accessible' part of Slint, coming as I was from a particular musical direction. Previously, I had an allergy to the whole aesthetic idea of post-rock or math-rock (don't worry, I'm on meds now... the doctors call them the mercury program). The song 'Rhoda', in no small way, helped change that. You see, I was listening to a lot of Maximillian Colby, which was a very heavily Slint-influenced emo/hardcore band, similar in vein to the Swing Kids or perhaps Clikatat Ikatowi. But Slint-influenced is not the same as Slint, so when I downloaded Tweez (the only Slint record Touch and Go have released on eMusic... insert conspiracy theory here) I was a little disappointed, not to say confused. Because this alternate version of 'Rhoda' is simply so much better than that entire album. Right from the starting notes, it is probably Slint's loudest song, performing a similar synthesis of styles to 'Glenn' but simultaneously amping the sound up several notches, drenching the spaces between jagged riffs in perfectly pitched feedback, descending into weird, metallic noise and finally collapsing into a droning whine...

Repeat play is advised, with caution... possible some of the most intense twelve minutes of your musical experience ever.



Slint - s/t ep

8 comments:

sweet baby jaysus said...

have a good time at slint tonight, never seen them just cherrished their records. thanks for posting this, i had it on 10" years ago, but it left with my ex years ago and haven't seen it around too much. i thought outside of spiderland this was their finest moment. the instrumentals blow away the tweez version. but that's just me...

blend77 said...

i have to agree with you and jay that this is a very worthy addition next to spiderland.

i also love the cover artwork for this one. so dark and foreboding.

very great that you get to see Spiderland performed live in its entirety. Its probably too late to request, but I would love to see some pictures from the show...

definitely give us a report if youre up to it.

CHEERS!

David said...

Great Post! I'm also off to see them perform Spiderland but it's tomorrow night in Glasgow!!Cant wait to say the least.One of the small independent shops in Glasgow just recently got a whole load of Slint in so in about two days I managed to pick up both albums and this but it's a great EP

laters!

papstar said...

great post...awesome writing skills on this one. great review,

gabbagabbahey said...

Thanks guys! Deffo do a report tomorrow... all I'll say for now is that it was AWESOME!

Sorry blend, no pics. I have a good camera and all, but I've never done gig photography. And especially this gig, I thought deserved undivided attention... I'm trying to do a sketch! But I'm crap at portraiture so it'll probably stay unreleased.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did, David. They're probably about halfway through the set at the time I'm writing this... it's a surprisingly long setlist, for a good reason!

420420pizza said...

i like this alot, i downloaded it last night and was pretty excited to listen to it today. smoked some nug and jammed. :)

thx d000d

David said...

tonights the night! ant wait and your review of the gig was awesome!Hopefully get some photo's and I'll stick them up on my blog to share

Anonymous said...

So what's the deal with everybody slagging off the Tweez album.
I came from the Sonic Youth/Big Black/Swans musical spectrum of the universe and bought Tweez when it came out on Jennifer Hartman records
, I loved it then And I still love it now. I guess it's got more to do with the fact, that if you work you're way backwards thru the music it's sometimes harder to under stand cause it doesn't compute with what's all ready familiar to you. But if you follow it as it evolves it's easier to understand where it came from and where it's going. Like lot of people who started listening to Sonic Youth after the Goo album never could quite get their heads around Confusion is sex
or Evol.