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During its original run in the late '80s and early '90s, Slint never reached a huge audience: Its music was, by its nature, too dark and strange and sprawling. But its influence
has stretched for decades, and its two full-length albums (1989's _Tweez_ and 1991's _Spiderland_) are, to this day, counted as underground classics. It's hard to talk about
Slint without using two foreboding and loaded descriptors: "seminal" and "post-rock," neither of which conjures much in the way of warmth. To call a band
"seminal" is to redefine its albums as homework; to call a band "post-rock" is to make it seem as shadowy and formless as self-important as the term itself. Listening to
_Spiderland_ now, freshly remastered for this box set by Bob Weston, it's clear how much it deserves reconsideration as a work of haunting beauty and surprising warmth. As a vocalist,
Brian McMahan rarely stays in one place for long, and he spends _Spiderland_ speaking, speak-singing, whispering and screaming — sometimes well outside the forefront of the mix. But listen
to the revealing nine-minute ballad "Washer," and you hear an uncommonly sensitive and lovely vocal, not to mention a big, bleeding heart. Slint is important, sure, but it's
not _just_ important. McMahan and David Pajo weave their guitars together in dense and foreboding thickets, but they also let their instruments breathe in great and graceful ways.
_Spiderland_ is certainly getting the reissue package it deserves: a limited-edition $150 box set with three 180-gram vinyl LPs and two CDs (including 79 minutes of demos, outtakes,
instrumentals, live material and other odds and ends), a 104-page booklet (complete with an essay by Will Oldham, who shot the photo on the original album's cover), and a 90-minute
documentary called _Breadcrumb Trail_, by the filmmaker Lance Bangs. But the album still stands gloriously on its own as the modest and compact, six-song, 40-minute set it's always
been. It's worth discovering and rediscovering, and worth celebrating as more than the sum of its influence. Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.