90$ REVIVAL
Is it an admission of defeat for a musician to revisit former glories? Is it a nostalgic pay day or something
more profound? Rachel Devine asks these question of four bands who blew up big in the early 90s: Slint, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins and Dinosaur Jr, all of whom pay
us a visit this month
hen you are young there is no such thing as nostalgia. there is only the seemingly limitless advance of new
experiences. Music inevitably provides the
backdrop — a drunken first kiss. the first gig you
ever sneaked into underage. or maybe just that tedious Saturday shift in Burger King. And so everyone‘s formative music comes back to haunt them in the end. A song or a band can become a trigger for memories of lost youth and life before mortgages and car pools.
It is the stuff of a nostalgia peddler‘s dream.
and the reason why so many bands reform or
simply stay together for so long in the first place
— reason dictates that a true fan is a fan for life.
But if there was one musical genre that seemed destined to side-swipe longevity — to burn out brightly at its peak — it was the post-rock/pre- grunge hinterland of altemative rock. which had its heyday in the late-l980s and early l‘)9()s. It was hardly a cash cow the first time around. the DIY ethic was resolutely underground. and while some bands rose to the top and skimmed the greater share of the profits. most bands existed hand-to-mouth and record-to-record.
This month. four bands from that era with differing fortunes and impact — Sonic Youth. Slint. Smashing Pumpkins and Dinosaur Jr — play gigs in Scotland within a week of each other. some 20 years after they formed. Perhaps the most interesting twist in this rock eventuality is the reformation of Slint. the quartet from Louisville. Kentucky whose second album Spider/and is arguably the most disproportionately influential in music history. at least since the first cave man opened his mouth and discovered he could sing. Mogwai are just one of the major bands who cite them as their reason for being.
Spiderlana' was the quiet/loud guitar blueprint of post-rock. It featured just six sparse. precisely
10 THE LIST 16—23 Aug 2007
crafted songs of melancholy that featured bleak
jagged guitar sounds layered with McMahan's
surreal mumbled vocals. which occasionally broke into frenzied screams. It had a quality that was both terrifying and indescribably beautiful. The group disbanded on the eve of the release of Spider/um! for reasons that even the keenest indie sleuth has been unable to fully uncover.
Rumours were rife that some band members had
found the making of Spider/and so emotionally taxing they had to be institutionalised.
.. 4" i? A SMASHING PUMPKINS
‘REASON DICTATES THAT A TRUE FAN IS A FAN FOR LIFE'