And so another indie favourite makes my all time list.
There's not really much I can say about this album that hasn't already been espoused at length by pretty much everyone whose ever heard it, so I'm not going to bother repeating any of that.
For me, Spiderland's appeal lies in its slow, creeping menace, the oblique stories it tells through its six songs, and the way the entire album seems to build towards the cathartic indulgence of Good Morning Captain's closing minutes.
On first play, I thought GMS was decent, and heard a band whose sound clearly influenced many that followed. However, it was not until some rainy day a week or so later that I really heard Spiderland, and it was then that the album really opened itself up to me. At exactly one minute and twenty seconds into 'Breadcrumb Trail', at the brief segue just before the song burst open, spilling its innards into my headphones, I got goosebumps. McMahan's almost pained vocal and the foreboding portent implied by the doom-like progression of the song's "chorus" matched the oppressive bleakness of that day, backing a cryptic tale of an encounter with a mysterious fortune teller. And so, that otherwise ordinary, miserable and wet day, like so many on this cold rainy isle, was at that moment transformed, by music, into something poetic. From that point, I knew this would be an album that would stay with me forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment