By George Chen

photo by Sebastian Mlynarski

I haven't been of the mind to put on Slint's albums lately, not because I've outgrown them, but because they're already embedded in my head. When I do put them on, it's not difficult to remember what felt important about the music the first time I heard it. My first exposure was Tweez (originally self-released on Jennifer Hartman Records and Tapes and later pressed by Touch and Go), which starts with Brian McMahan complaining to Steve Albini about his headphones malfunctioning. The intensely trebly guitars and flatulent bass sound were new, and the creepy and purposeful vocals, spoken more than sung, were eerie. They fit in with the emo upsurges of Fugazi, for example, but their ambiguity led to a lot wider interpretation. For a long time, the lyrics "tweezer fetish" would pop into my head and give me chills – McMahan sounded clinical, sort of like a postmortem medical examiner. I don't even know if I actually liked the sort of jazz-metal vibe coming out of these boys, a shimmery tone that was pretty if somehow off-kilter. Maybe it didn't fit my idea of what was cool at the time, but what did I know? Tweez was recorded in 1987, and I didn't hear it until about five years later.

No escape

Rather than serving as a "gateway" to an expansive musical horizon, the Slint family tree seems to turn back constantly on itself, creating an "all roads lead to Louisville" effect. Before Slint, there were Squirrel Bait, a mid-'80s melodic hardcore group that included the teenage McMahan and David Grubbs on guitars, the young Britt Walford on drums, and a whelp of a lad, Pete Searcy, on vocals. The two Squirrel Bait records originally came out on Homestead but were reissued on CD in the '90s via Grubbs's Drag City reissue imprint, Dexter's Cigar. Grubbs went on to form Bastro and Gastr del Sol and to continue playing solo, while McMahan begat Slint with Walford, Ethan Buckler on bass, and David Pajo on guitar. A lot of other familiar Louisville, Ky., names pop up when you look at all those liner notes: Will Oldham took the photo of the band immersed in water for the cover of their second album, 1991's Spiderland. One Slint legend involves the band's request for a female vocalist on the inside sleeve of Spiderland; supposedly PJ Harvey was one of the people who wrote in about the position.

Spiderland is considered the band's best work and has been creeping upward in importance as far as its influence on other music. Gone are most of Tweez's metatextual distractions of calling attention to the recording process itself; also, much of the chugga-chugga bombast is replaced by very clean guitar lines and a warmer bass tone. Some of this could be pinned on the change from Albini to Brian Paulson as engineer, or Buckler's replacement on bass by Todd Brashear, but it's also because the band feel more emotionally invested, comfortable in going against the entire Touch and Go grain by making a slow-tempo, pretty record. The "warmth" is still relatively chilly, and Spiderland might only be perceived as a lushly extravagant record in comparison to the abruptness of Tweez. As the opening track, "Breadcrumb Trail," exhibits, the quiet, pretty parts are a stark contrast to the explosive harmonica-sounding guitar parts, while McMahan deadpans the tale of some run-in with a carnival fortune-teller. The closer, "Good Morning, Captain," would end up on the Kids soundtrack, which may have added to many listeners' late discovery of the group.

American gothic

An odd link in the chain is an instrumental 10-inch record Touch and Go released long after the fact, in 1994. The two-song untitled EP, whose cover features an overhead view of a body with a gaping belly wound, ends with an extended jam off Tweez's "Rhoda," which is still chilling – a tight, propulsive blast of harmonics that ends up in plane-leveling washes of feedback. To me, this is maybe the most epic and the least revealing Slint recording, since there's no release information and only this jarring, violent image.

After the band's dissolution, the causes of which I've never delved into, McMahan formed the For Carnation and moved to Los Angeles. Walford was in an early version of the Breeders and formed a punk party band called Evergreen whose sole 1996 LP on Hi-Ball was recently reissued on CD by Temporary Residence. Pajo may be the most high-profile member, joining Tortoise before doing a number of other things, like playing in Aerial M/Papa M and Zwan. For this reunion, it's reported that Todd Cook from Crain and the For Carnation is playing bass.

Part of Slint's appeal to me personally was their total inaccessibility, not in an elitist, art-institutional sense of exclusivity, but rather in the nature of their obscurity and the fact that there was so little known about them in those pre-Internet days. They were a blank slate that has in the passing years grown into a cult, as evidenced by their reunion headlining the All Tomorrow's Parties Festival last month in England and selling out the Great American Music Hall on multiple nights. When I think of Slint, I cannot help but remember being at a party in Berkeley where in one corner, instead of drinking a beer and playing "Stairway to Heaven" on an acoustic guitar, someone was playing "Washer." No, it wasn't me, but I was paying close attention.

The true nature of what Slint were, as open to interpretation as that is, is likely to be in effect if you were lucky enough to score tickets to their mostly sold-out Great American Music Hall shows. It would be uncharacteristic for this branch of indie rock royalty to be high-fiving or smirking knowingly at each other between guitar solos or anything so embarrassing. If they did, though, it would be their right. Reunited to curate and perform at last month's All Tomorrow's Parties music festival in England, Slint decided not to do any interviews for this tour, keeping the sort of obscurantist shroud ever in place. That allegiance to inaccessibility will probably help make this reunion work and maybe even improve on their legacy.

Slint play with Faun Fables March 9, 9 p.m., Great American Music Hall, 859 O'Farrell, S.F. $22. March 10 and 11 shows are sold out. (415) 885-0750.

 To purchase the music featured in this article, visit iTunes:

1. Slint, Tweez (Touch and Go)