Slint - When hardcore grew up

Born out of the ashes of Squirrel Bait, Slint are the forefathers of the Louisville school, which in the Nineties would prove to be one of post-rock's most prolific scenes. The band was formed by guitarist Brian McMahan and drummer Britt Walford, with Ethan Buckler on bass and David Pajo on second guitar. Already in the first sessions of 1987, recorded with Steve Albini, it's clear their sound is something quite distinctive. It's a complex mixture of punk, acid-rock, progressive and free-jazz, pushing past the traditional boundaries of song form.

Their debut came in 1989 with the mini-album Tweez, a collage of complex, eccentric tracks, each dedicated to one of the quartet's parents (plus one of the four's dog). Almost entirely instrumental, with just a few tracks that are only “spoken,” as on the opening “Ron,” it's a surprising, anarchic record, with hardcore-derived guitars and fractured rhythmic structures, but also slowed-down funk touches (“Carol”), raga-like solos (“Kent”), delicate psychedelic digressions (“Darlene”), and bizarre bucolic minuets (“Nan Ding”).

While Seattle was in thrall to the grunge of Nirvana and Soundgarden, reviving the canons of pure, hard rock, Louisville was moving in the opposite direction, starting from the idea that it was precisely that kind of rock that needed to be left behind. By reworking hardcore, Slint laid the groundwork for what would become the post-rock of the likes of Tortoise, Dirty Three, Trans Am, June of '44, Gastr Del Sol, and Labradford.

But it's with Spiderland, in 1991, that the American band established itself as one of the most important (and most influential) rock acts of the late century. Sharpening the insights of their earlier work, Slint pursued an even more refined exploration of rhythm and timbre, eventually arriving at sounds that feel almost transcendent. It's an original sound, one that shuns rock clichés, and one that would go on to be imitated by countless bands throughout the decade. Starting with Codeine and all the bands of the "slo-core" scene. The tracks on "Spiderland" are indeed slow and catatonic, at times taking the shape of dazed, lysergic ballads. From the opening "Breadcrumb Trail", with its post-blues cadences, to the closing "Good Morning, Captain", with its more defined rhythms and Arabian-tinged echoes, the album is a sequence of small gems, like the neurotic "Don Aman", a succession of chords and discords, the hypnotic "Washer", with its whispered chant and stretched-out sounds, or the anemic "For Dinner". But in every track, however listless, there's a rock jolt. The one in "Nosferatu Man" is perhaps the most virulent of all.

But with Slint and the post-Slint bands, is rock dead? "Bands like Stereolab and Tortoise deserve great credit for opening up new musical frontiers for rock," observes guitarist David Pajo, who, once his time with Slint ended, collaborated with both bands. "I really love electronic music, from Suicide onward, and I firmly believe in the possibilities technology offers music. But God forbid anyone thinks rock is dead. Rock is still strong. It's just evolving."

Avant-gardists in a way only Sonic Youth had managed to be in the Eighties, always ahead of their time, Slint forged a music that was cerebral, impalpable, alienating and detached. A music that brought the hardcore generation into adulthood. "With Slint, it's as if the generation raised on Husker Du had suddenly arrived at its own Big Chill," write Stefano Bianchi and Eddy Cilìa in the book "Post-Rock e oltre". "Taking up the legacy of that restless body, deconstructing it until it became unrecognizable, breeding something new and unheard-of out of its remains, they even tried to refound rock itself. And they very nearly succeeded."

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