Slint: Tweez (4/12/2024)

Slint: Tweez [Touch and Go, 1993] The nice thing about my position in my one-employee industry is that I have the benefit of reviewing whatever the hell I want. This is a precarious opportunity, though-for instance, what would justify me choosing Slint's obscure 1989 debut Tweez (later reissued in 1993 by Touch and Go Records,) over, for instance, We Still Don't Trust You, the second of two collaborative albums this year by Metro Boomin and Future, or perhaps 20-second leaks of The Tortured Poets Department? This opportunity, while making my site a bit questionable in mainstream credibility, allows me to dig into the buried treasure chest of obscure indie debuts. Tweez certainly falls into this category. Followed by the more acclaimed and successful Spiderland, Tweez is still enough of a statement in itself that, had Spiderland never been released, you would wonder if it would've been hailed as a masterpiece by critics who caught up to the late-eighties indie scene a bit too late.

Tweez kicks off with "Ron," a one-minute mostly-instrumental with studio talk. On an album more stripped down than most Dischord releases, this is a recurring theme. "Ron" is immediately followed by "Nan Ding," a Sonic Youth-style blurt with more spoken word. Although you could call this meandering, it works better than a rhythmically disjointed attempt to sing along the malleable, constantly shifting songs on Tweez.

The closest parallel to [other bands] here would be "Carol," one of the few songs with singing that isn't buried in the mix. It's filled with eerie lyrics and menacing bass grooves that would later be popularized on early Fugazi records and maybe even Pearl Jam's Ten. The similarities stop there. This prominence of the bass is another recurring theme, especially on "Warren," a slice of post-hardcore with a broken groove.

Despite its collective runtime of 29 minutes, the album is carried by lengthier cuts. "Kent" starts out as goofy funk with frequent tempo shifts, before it ends with a short, spoken message and a menacing outro. "Charlotte" follows it, a rampaging rocker with abrupt pauses.

Tweez is a strange record, needless to say. I'll let you decide if it is compositionally uniform or just united by its theme of weirdness (for the sake of optimism, I'll choose the latter,). With the manic semi-freakouts and the dark, ghostly lyrics, we can only say that using this method in the first place is brave enough. [7.2/10]