Codeine

“We dream of journeys through the universe: but is the universe not within us?”

(Novalis)

In 1990 the debut album by the Codeine laid siege to the firmament of a music that kept being called “rock” only because of the instrumentation: the particular no longer flowed into the universal, but folded ever more inward, sealing itself inside an impenetrable shell inhabited by narcolepsy and solipsism. With Codeine from New York and Slint from Louisville, the poetics of imploded feeling silently broke through – an incommunicability with no release valve.

“Frigid Stars Lp” by the former and “Spiderland” by the latter, released the following year, became the banners of a new way of making rock that no longer recognized itself as such, without ever fully cutting ties with the past. Back in the Seventies, after all, genuine musical movements like kraut-rock, the Canterbury scene and part of new wave had already thrown into crisis both the song form and the epic dimension of rock.

This time, however, the move beyond the classic canons of the rock song was not a premeditated program as it had been in the past: what drove Codeine and Slint was not some predetermined artistic intent, but rather the spontaneous manifestation of a latent sensibility that also dwelt in other bands of the era, such as Galaxie 500 and Red House Painters. If in the Seventies contamination with “highbrow” avant-garde, electronics and jazz improvisation had turned rock music into something else too, at the start of the Nineties part of the rock underground died off for good – less for aesthetic reasons than out of urgent expressive need: a less “spectacular” way had to be found to convey a sad, melancholy mood, often verging on depression. The concurrent stylistic innovations of Codeine and Slint, substantially different yet still kindred, were the perfect answer. Theirs is a glacial, intimate music, subtly poetic, in which the rhythmic pulse is slowed and fragmented, solos are replaced by fleeting bursts of distortion, harmonies are made of faint chiming, and singing is reduced to a whisper.

“Frigid Stars Lp” and “Spiderland”, twin records, then. Two works that would come to be described as post-rock (a term that highlights the ability to move beyond the standard limits of properly rock compositions) and slowcore (a term used instead to point more specifically to music whose rhythm is slowed to the point of exasperation). This latter label would become the very trademark of Codeine's brief career.

The New York band – formed by singer and bassist Stephen Immerwahr, drummer Chris Brokaw and guitarist John Engle – made a tentative entrance onto the Big Apple's underground circuits in 1989 under the “protection” of the more seasoned Bitch Magnet, who, by including on their 1990 “Valmead” the little gem “Pea”, written by Immerwahr (at the time their sound engineer), drew the attention of the German label Glitterhouse to Codeine, who then invited the band to record a proper LP. No sooner said than done: “Frigid Stars Lp” hit European record shops as early as August 1990. The following year, on September 1st, Sub Pop released it for the US market too, with two extra tracks compared to the European edition.

Produced by Mike McMackin, whose exemplary work on the instruments' tone keeps the sound of “Frigid Stars Lp” feeling fresh even today, the album opens with the magnificent “D”, the prototype of the slowcore style: hushed guitar arpeggios intertwine with the leaden pulse of the bass, while the drums mark out a tempo in slow motion. The vocals, almost a litany, sketch out a listless melody. Ataraxia, the stasis of feeling, seems just a step away. Then, suddenly, an explosion of guitars arrives, accompanied by a melodic opening that brings tears to the eyes. It's a kick in the pants to existential torpor, a trembling jolt of life. The same formal structure is used again in the superb “Cave-in”, where the sonic dialectic between brief distorted detonations and sudden pauses generates, this time, a constant tension.

Immerwahr's bass is the load-bearing instrument of these ballads of desolation and despondency: its withered grooves drag the drums into an endless swoon, as happens in the narcotic “Gravel Bed”, the hermetic “Old Things” and the unbroken hypnosis of “3 Angels”. It then falls to John Engle's distorted guitar to give these songs at least a semblance of their long-lost legendary vigor, first in the autumnal sketch of “Pickup Song” and then in the martial “Cigarette Machine”, the only track to show any residue of sonic violence.

“New Years” is pure dreamlike wonder. Sped up, it could pass for melancholy-tinged power-pop, yet instead it remains an egg that refuses to hatch, life struggling to be lived. Heart-wrenching. Its counterpart is the claustrophobic “Second Chance”, a nightmare shaped by the bass's death-rattles and the guitar's sinister toil. So, in the end, all that's left is to appeal to a ray of sunlight to come and dispel the darkness, to warm the soul. The closing “Pea” takes on that task: “When I see the sun I hope it shines on me and gives me everything”. The apology of slowness this time appears in disguise, that of a metaphysical folk embroidered over fragile acoustic guitar chords, solemn piano chimes and cascades of flanger. The album that celebrates hypotrophic rock could not have closed any other way. Low, undisputed lords of slowcore since 1994, are still saying thank you. And they're not the only ones.

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04/03/2012