page_title: Spiderland
section_title: Initial critical reception
hierarchical_section_title: Spiderland / Release and reception / Initial critical reception
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Steve Albini en concert avec Shellac à Sao Paulo en avril 2008
context_page_description: Spiderland is the second and final studio album by the American rock band Slint. Touch and Go Records issued the album on March 27, 1991, as the band's first release on the independent label. Slint's lineup featured Brian McMahan on vocals and guitar, David Pajo on guitar, Todd Brashear on bass guitar, and Britt Walford on drums. Walford also played lead vocals and guitar on the track "Don, Aman". Brian Paulson engineered the album, which comprises six songs across approximately 40 minutes.
  Slint formed in Louisville, Kentucky in 1986. The band members met as teenagers playing in the Midwestern punk scene, but Slint soon diverged from their hardcore roots. By the time they recorded Spiderland in late 1990, they had developed a complex, idiosyncratic sound. Atypical rhythmic meters, harmonic dissonance, and irregular song structures characterize the album's style. The band exerted tight control over the songs' dynamics with extreme, sometimes abrupt changes between quiet and loud. The vocals alternate between spoken word, singing, and shouting. The narrative lyrics evoke moods of unease, loneliness, and despair.
  Slint broke up shortly before the album's release.
context_section_description: The album's release passed virtually unnoticed by the American music press. Even punk zines overlooked it. In a later interview, McMahan said that they "didn't engage with the media either way, but had we engaged, with the 'zine culture or the music press at the time, there wasn't really a huge infrastructure for getting information out on a broad scale. We definitely avoided it and it was not a considered marketing decision."
  There was one major exception to the general inattention from critics: a laudatory, 600-word review by Albini in the British music magazine Melody Maker. Albini praised the music's originality and emotional intensity, as well as the clarity and immediacy of Paulson's production. He claimed that Tweez—which he himself had produced—only "hints at their genius" but had little of the "staying power" manifested on Spiderland. He awarded the album "ten fucking stars" and predicted that it would rise in stature:
  "It's an amazing record ... and no one still capable of being moved by rock music should miss it. In 10 years it will be a landmark and you'll have to scramble to buy a copy then. Beat the rush."
  While Albini's review did not ignite much initial interest, it rescued the album from an otherwise-assured relegation to obscurity.
  Two other early reviews appeared in the UK press, both positive—though not as unreservedly enthusiastic as Albini. A review in Select noted the album's "creeping success", which reviewer Mike Noon attributed to Walford's affiliation with The Breeders. Noon cautioned that Slint's sound would take patience to fully appreciate: "As immediate as a snail trail to hell, Spiderland needs several plays to burn its way into your consciousness, but when it does..." In September 1992, Ben Thompson reviewed both Spiderland and Tweez for The Wire. Thompson said that Slint's reputation was growing by that time, as "people like Pavement" were "hailing them as guiding lights for a new obliqueness". "It's not surprising these records confused people on first release", he wrote, in part because listeners had been primed to expect straightforward noise rock—a "total red herring" that concealed the band's "alarmingly introverted" sound. Although Thompson found Spiderland more accessible than Tweez, he wrote that it "still demands that you push you push your head up right close to the speakers (or buy some headphones) if you want to find out what is being said and sung. But you do want to find out."
caption: In a glowing review for Melody Maker, Steve Albini (pictured in 2008) predicted Spiderland would someday be seen as a "landmark".[38]
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