Spiderland

Slint recorded Spiderland in four days in August 1990 at a studio in Chicago, writing the lyrics in the room as they recorded rather than bringing anything finished. Vocals were recorded in no more than two takes, with almost no rehearsal. Brian McMahan had two microphones set up for himself throughout the sessions, one for soft spoken passages and one for the moments the songs erupted. The band tried adding effects during the mix and rejected everything, resulting in production so sparse it sounds like you are in the room with them. The day after the sessions ended, McMahan checked into a mental health facility where he was diagnosed with depression. By the time the album was released in March 1991, the band had already broken up.

Nobody bought it. The US press largely ignored it. Then the UK music papers discovered it, word spread slowly across the underground, and over the following decade Spiderland became one of the most cited records in independent music. The term "Slint dynamics," referring to the technique of long stretches of quiet tension followed by sudden explosive volume, became shorthand for an entire approach to rock music. Post-rock, math rock, and the whole lineage of quiet-loud independent guitar music that followed through the nineties traces a direct line back to these four people in a Chicago studio in four days.

The album closes with "Good Morning, Captain," a ten-minute piece about a shipwrecked sailor that ends with McMahan abandoning the spoken-word delivery he had used throughout the record and screaming "I miss you" over the full force of the band. He was sick by the end of recording the vocal. It is one of the most devastating closes to an album in rock history.