The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

Spiderland is a staple in any self-respecting indie-cum-post-rock fan’s collection - a seminal album that easily pulled in two night’s worth of people to hear it played live and in full. And yet there was something immediately untoward about the prospect of seeing Slint at the gargantuan Koko. This is a band whose innovative distortions of volume and structure would be far more poignant in some dingy backstreet club.

Nonetheless, the band played as old hands. They were proficient in their delivery and professional in their manner. The sultry ‘Good Morning, Captain’ crept inside your head and heart making you want to explode and implode simultaneously; ‘Washer’ succeeded in making you feel wholeheartedly despondent.

Slint are a band that eschew indie pop in favour of a more pronounced intensity of experimental guitars, bass and drums, which they pair with the Brian McMahan’s nocturnal vocals. You imagine their fans to be introverted outsider boys who need to get laid more often, and so it proved: there were probably 75 men to every girl at the show.

Incidentally, the audience were bunch of cunts. Bravo to the man who yelled at a young woman for daring to carry a bag; to the group of thugs who mobbed a guy for jumping about; and to the retards that chattered throughout the quiet (and loud) bits. In the end, everyone’s chance to experience one of the most forceful bands and records of the late eighties turned into nothing more than a shit night out in Camden.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Slint decide to take a hiatus from this point on. Rumour has it that’s exactly what they’re doing.