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Oct 15, 2014 By Michael Wojtas Slint

“It’s only been in the last few months that I’ve realized Spiderland is an enduring record. I kept waiting for it to be forgotten,” remarks David Pajo. The Slint guitarist, who has agreed to give us his song-by-song impressions of the now-classic album, isn’t speaking with false modesty; at the time of its 1991 release, Spiderland puzzled most reviewers and went largely unnoticed by the listening public. In the following decades, long after Slint initially disbanded, popular and critical curiosity in the mysteries of the record steadily increased. “There was no marketing, people just had to find it,” recalls Pajo.

The post-rock tag was deployed to categorize Spiderland‘s deep silences, harrowing noise bursts and elliptical song structures. Math rock labels were thrust at it in attempt to reduce Slint’s exacting—yet very human—interplay to mere schematics. The album began inching its way into “Best of the ‘90s”-type lists, its inexplicably unsettling cover art sitting uneasily amongst overnight indie rock landmarks from the same era. Perhaps because of its intensely insular nature, its presence in the ranks of seminal releases such as Slanted & Enchanted and Loveless somehow seemed like an infiltration, the work of outliers amongst outliers. “I’ve always felt grateful to be a part of Slint, but I was also always surprised that anyone had heard of us, let alone liked the music,” Pajo admits.

This year, thanks to a comprehensive Spiderland boxset and the fine Lance Bangs documentary Breadcrumb Trail, Slint (now reformed and touring) is perhaps more revered than ever. Pajo seems genuinely pleased to witness a new generation of listeners discovering this still challenging music. Describing recent performances, he remarks, “Dads are bringing their teenage kids, and they’re both fans.” Despite this renewal of interest, these songs continue to operate by their own interior logic and language.

Discussing the album’s eerie, narrative-driven lyrics and peculiar syntax, Pajo mentions a personal affinity for the “Nosferatu Man” phrase “And I railed through the night.” This, in turn, prompts me to think of “Like a bat I flushed the girl,” a line from the same track I’ve always found striking. It’s a moment that suggests a kind of word-of-mouth intimacy still surrounds the album. There’s a secretive quality to its words and sound that time and a growing stature have yet to dispel. Like unearthed Spiderland outtakes and Bangs’ documentary, Pajo’s insights provide layers of compelling context, but they do nothing to demystify this ever-elusive record.

“Breadcrumb Trail”

David Pajo: “There’s one thing I especially remember about that song that’s not in the documentary or anything. And I’ve never gone back and talked to Britt [Walford, Slint drummer and vocalist] or Brian [McMahan, Slint guitarist and vocalist] about this. One time during practice we took a break and went upstairs and listened to a cassette of that song when it was still an instrumental. I was just like a fly on the wall while Britt and Brian were coming up with ideas for each part, like what the narrative would be. I remember at one part, Britt saying it sounded like being on a rollercoaster, and that’s where the whole fairground/carnival vibe came from for the lyrics. It was cool process to watch, listening to the instrumental and coming up with a plot based on the feeling of each part.”

“Nosferatu Man”

“That’s pretty much a Britt song, he wrote most of the guitar parts on it. I think I wrote my guitar parts, but he came up with the main riffs, arranged most of it and wrote the lyrics. I think this is another one where he would listen to it, and when a part would make him feel a certain way or imagine something—like the train rolling along—he would incorporate that into the lyrics. But that’s one of the hardest songs for me to play live, and I don’t know if it’s like that for everybody else. Because the whole quiet part, that whole intro riff never becomes a repeating pattern. It’s kind of like one long pattern that has to be memorized as a whole, and it never repeats itself like a 6/4 or 7/4. I always forget it—I put a little cheat sheet on my pedal board so I know where I am. [Laughs] Britt’s drum part locks in with me, and he plays this pretty complicated part while doing these spoken word vocals on top of it that don’t always land on the beat. And he always plays it perfectly, like it’s nothing. He’s never messed it up, at practice or anything. He’s never made a mistake—he doesn’t even think about it. I don’t know how he does it, it’s some kind of inhuman coordination he has.”

“Don, Aman”

“Another Britt song-the one none of us had heard it until we spent that single weekend in the studio recording Spiderland. So we didn’t have a lot of time to learn and record a new song, and we had spent about a year writing the five other songs we recorded. But Britt had it all worked out in his head. I don’t think he even had a cassette of it. He just started playing it for us. He wanted me to double his guitar part, and that was kind of tricky. The middle part of the song is another one of those things that sounds repetitive, but never actually repeats. At the time, I didn’t even know that this was a compositional technique; it was “through-composed.” It’s a really unusual song, and definitely wasn’t like the punk rock music I had grown up on. So I had to learn this part and exactly mirror what he was playing. The idea was the two different tones of our guitars would give it a fuller sound. We ended up getting it in two takes. It’s an awesome vision Britt had for that song—the whole distorted part that fades out, then comes back at the end and just fades out again.”

“Washer”

“Brian came up with the bulk of this song, then we all collaborated on the arrangement. But the lyrics and everything are all his. A funny story about the lyrics is that the guy who booked our U.S. tour at the time really liked this song. He wanted to write them down, so he would lift the needle off his vinyl copy of Spiderland, write down a line, then play the next part and so on. He said it read like poetry. The next day, his girlfriend found the piece of paper with the lyrics on it and thought it was a suicide note, and wanted to know if he was okay. “Washer” also has my one note guitar solo that I’m so proud of. [Laughs] I did that a couple times on Spiderland; the guys would say, “Do a solo on this part.” At that point in my life, if someone asked me to do a solo, I would do the exact opposite of what a solo usually is. Instead of playing a bunch of notes, I would just play one, though I did some decorative stuff around it there. There’re some cool, weird things in that song. There’s guitar feedback with a tremolo pedal on it that we mixed in really low. It only comes in on the main riff. If you’re really listening for it, you can hear it. It gives off a bit of a drone feeling. The arrangement also has some cool touches. We’ll come back to the main riff, which is pretty melodic in a minor key, and we’ll introduce a new riff that’ll clash with it. Like we’ll just hit notes that sound wrong. That was a way of building tension, which is what the whole song is about.”

“For Dinner…”

“This has always been my favorite song from Spiderland. I’m not sure why. I think it’s because it’s instrumental. It’s just two guitars, bass and drums, all on standard tuning. No pedals, effects or distortion. There’s something really pure about that song. The songwriting and the dynamics are really sensitive. It uses just a traditional rock set-up to create this really unique feeling—it’s probably our most atmospheric song. This year we’ve been opening our shows with that song. I always feel like we’re burning sage or something. [Laughs] It kind of purifies everything that happened on stage before, and prepares you for everything that’s going to happen next. After Spiderland came out, I couldn’t listen to it for at least a decade; I’d always get annoyed and just leave the room or something. I think it’s because I only heard the mistakes or the things we could’ve improved. That’s because of how long we spent writing the songs, and how little time we had to record them. We only got to do two takes of “For Dinner,” and it’s missing this one snare hit—it ends up being more of a rimshot. To me, if it had the really hard snare hit, it would have added to the drama, but we didn’t have time to do it again. Of course, nobody else cares or notices that stuff, but I know what the intention was. So it was always hard to listen to it. It had always been my favorite in practice, too, and on record it’s missing that snare hit. Nowadays, in Pro Tools, you just fly in a snare from earlier in the song and no one would think twice about it. But this was recorded Friday night through Sunday morning on two-inch tape. We got two takes if we were lucky. Most songs were first take.”

“Good Morning, Captain”

“The way I remember it is that Brian had an ideal for vocals, and he played the 4-track for me. I had an idea of what he was going for. But every time we practiced before going into the studio, it seemed like he would want to change the arrangement. The guitars stop so he can do the verses, and he kept changing the lyrics, so we had to keep changing the arrangement. And when we went into the studio, it turned out he had changed them again. I feel like for him, that song was never really finished. What’s on Spiderland was just where it was on that day. But Brian’s vocal delivery really blew me away. He had a really exact idea of how each line should be delivered. He had a clear idea of the narrative. Right before the “I miss you” part, some of the spoken word stuff where he’s saying “I’m sorry” and “I’ll make it up to you”.... That was all improvised. He was trying to build up to “I miss you,” but then he’d say he wanted to try again. So we’d roll back over it and he’d try again. Then he did the one that’s on the record, and I remember being really blown away. He wanted to tape over it, but I remember being like, “Dude, you need to come in here and listen to this verse.” Even now, I’ll get the chills when it comes to that part. And that feeling doesn’t happen to me much in my old age. [Laughs]”

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