All this Slinty talk has really stuck in my craw this past month or so. I was sitting at work the other day, proctoring an exam, and thinking about something somebody wrote about the influence of Slint. You know, zillions of bands pretty much overnight started to sound like them, particularly after Spiderland came out. I was in a band like this! I think we certainly transgressed it to a degree, but for a while there, it was definitely a touchstone for us.

At any rate, I was digging through my records and actively looking for albums that do this. I listened to a few the other day. Here's my thoughts, I guess:

Engine Kid "Bear Catching Fish"-- not the most popular opinion, but this is by far my favorite of their releases--7" s included. I think it's pretty overt, this slinttasticness, but I don't care. I love this record. It's slow, meandering, and plodding, yes, but hits home much more effectively than the riffage that was to come. I just wish "Nailgun" was on this album. It would fit, trust me, it would.

June of 44 "Engine Takes to Water"--I can't figure out the drums. I THINK the snares are turned off on this album, right? I think they are. The drums sound strange. The songs I like, but this one hasn't held up for me. It doesn't smack me in the belly like it did 10 years ago, nor should it. The yelling and whatnot. So young.

A Minor Forest-both lp's--To a great degree I enjoy and listen to these albums more than nearly any other band, or at least I certainly have. This was a great, great band. The slintiness seems like a pastiche here, particularly on Inindependence, their real masterpiece. And I think it is: a template or genus or something like that. The doubledisc collection is great, great, great too. Ultimately, it's the songs that get me. "Eric's Budding Romance" and "The Lonliest Enuretic"--OH, and "But the Pants Stay On"--I will enjoy these songs just as much 20 years from now as I do now and as I did nearly a decade ago. They just really ring true to me.
My friend Tim Cook calls this porno slint. That's great!

Rodan "Rusty" --This fucking rules. I don't even care about the ripping off or whatever. This album is great.

Enemymine "The Ice in Me"--I really think this was one of the last wave of bands/records to create something inspired from the notion of dynamics/tension/bunch of other musical crap I don't know much about. Mike once jokingly referred to Enemymine as Slint Bizkit. That's about right.



I listened to a shitload more records the past few weeks, many of which are really unremarkable. Not to the point of selling them back, but maybe to the point of not listening to them for a while. That type of unremarkable. For instance, lots of the instrumental type bands that didn't have words--lots of those that I really, really enjoyed at one point in my life leave me cold now. I don't know what that's about. I really listened to a lot of albums this week, yikes! Just enough to make the wife mad but not push her over the edge.

Thanks! This was a fun week.

Ike

Damn I loved Engine Kid, though Angel Wings really was the one for me.
Got to meet Greg Anderson the other week, he was out here with Sunn O))). Was a very strange moment.