Spiderland
Slint

So I really enjoyed “Spiderland” by The Slints… Had never heard of them, nor any of their songs – but was pleasantly surprised… The highlight of the album is the hypnotic, heavy instrumental compositions – and while there isn’t much diversity throughout the album – what they do, they do incredibly well… Unfortunately, from a vocals perspective – there really aren’t any to speak of… Oh there are lyrics throughout the album – mainly a low-level spoken word kinda thing, with an occasional attempt at singing, but really not even passable… You could argue that it was “their sound or style”, but any objective review would call it like it is – dreadful… Would have been really interesting to hear those tracks with a competent rock vocalist who could have really done something with it… The other complaint, was that the audio quality sounded like the recordings of the band that I was in while in college calked “The Edge” (i.e. No – there are none of our albums on this list, and yes – we had our name before U2 blew up and their guitar player stole our name – but I digress… : ) Oh it’s fine, but it’s pretty raw – and maybe that was intentional, but the drums sounded just like mine did when mic’d up and recorded in the early-80’s… : ) By far, the best track on the album IMO, was “The Washer” – with “Good Morning – Captain” a distant 2nd… Never would have heard this without the 1,001… Would probably give it a 2.75 if I could, but their originality, and heavy sound has got me feeling generous – so a 3 it is…

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