SPIDERLAND

Spiderland is one of the most acclaimed underground albuns of the 90's. It is considered by the critics as THE FIRST TRUE POST-ROCK ALBUM, which opened doors to a great progression in music, reinventing rock without leaving its main ideas behind. The great merit of the band was the creation of a constellation of minimalistic incursions while transmitting several kinds of depressive feelings at their magnificiency. Brian McMahan's voice varied between grunge-like screams, delicate whispering and (more frequent) narrating voice, helping to create that sublime deep effect. In fact, the album is very intense, sometimes seeming to reach the almost-suicidal state of depression. There are even rumours saying that some of the band's members had to be ocasionally institutionalized during the album sessions.

The album flows as if Brian McMahan was narrating a story whose final we can guess it is not going to be happy. It contains all the disturbed aspects of adolescent existence, functioning almost as a Freud trip to their cores, as the album has a very intimistic approach and the band members were simple kids (!) at the time. The first two tracks are the less depressive of the badge. Guitar interplay distortion in the opener track creates a strange and original effect. The album flows in a crescendo pain to its cathartic final. Indeed, the last track, "Good Morning Captain" is the album at its peak, their most known track, dealing with the loss of all of our friends in a terrible event, in a soft age. The combination of delicate minimalistic double-guitar aproach with the disturbing narration recreate perfectely such ambience, until the final explosion, the feeled scream "I'm in hell, i'm in hell, I miss you...". "Don, Aman" deals with the conscience of difference in a world of copied patterns and the terrible effects it may have to a self-questioning young man. In "Washer" the band creates a very depressive atmosphere with the subtle guitar lines, and it functions as a goodbye, taking epic contourns, as the author knew the inevitableness of the end, the terrible fate he could not avoid.

An historical album. It may be hard to believe how a group of 4 kids had such a visionary construction of rock, opening doors to bands like GY!BE, Explosions in the Sky, Tortoise, well, all the post-rock scene. An answer that certainly lies between the disturbed adolescent psychism.