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03/23/2005: ""
Hey check it out, vintage indie rock on The Original Soundtrack! I saw the Slint reunion the other night and I'm sorry to report that they bored me out of my skull, a few spellbinding moments of luminosity aside ("Good Morning, Captain" being one of them). I haven't listened to Spiderland since I was 17, though, which is perhaps telling. Excellent light show--stark, chilly blues and greens shooting like lasers through heavy thickets of fog, plus these weird corkscrew/spiral patterns projected onstage that made me wish I wasn't supremely sober. I felt really unsettled the entire time I was at the show, and then I realized why: no one was moving, not even an inch. Er, well, you can't dance to Slint, but even the rock-ish shows I've been to lately (Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance, No-Fun-Fest style noize assault) have had some kind of writhing or weird undulations or slam-dancing involved. But Slint: the band was completely immobile, and the audience was transfixed in doe-eyed adoration bordering on total paralysis. I've read varying ecstatic accounts of their reunion shows, and I can only guess that a) the sound wasn't nearly loud and enveloping enough at Irving Plaza that night; b) it was Irving Plaza, and therefore sucks rocks; c) Slint just looked exhausted, drained. Every labored chord change, every intricate Jacob's ladder of a guitar line -- it sounded exactly like the records. I don't mean this as a diss on Slint, necessarily, but more on reunion tours in general. Death to reunion tours! Long live the new flesh!
