The Decemberists' Colin Meloy releases new song called "Slint, Spiderland"
The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy has released a new solo acoustic song, and it’s called “Slint, Spiderland.” Colin and NPR explain:
“It’s one of those songs I don’t think I ever really intended for public consumption,” Colin Meloy says. “Sometimes you kind of scratch these things down to capture a moment, or some sort or observation of a moment.”
[…] While on breaks from from the book he’s currently writing, Meloy killed time by watching Breadcrumb Trail, a documentary about the making of the band Slint‘s 1991 album Spiderland, and thought about the weirdness of it all.
“I don’t know that it particularly spoke to the current moment in any way other than it felt completely disconnected from it,” the artist says. “Thing is about the lockdown and the quarantine, once we got past the initial [concerns] — like, how to get food, how to teach our kids and do our jobs at the same time — once that pattern had emerged, our lives as a stay-at-home writer and a stay-at-home illustrator were sort of bizarrely normal. … And so I think that was the moment: ‘Here I am getting lost in watching this documentary. Meanwhile, this thing is happening outside.'”
It’s a gorgeous song, as you can hear for yourself right here:
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Must-Hear Folk Albums of 2020 So Far
Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher
Bonny Light Horseman – Bonny Light Horseman
Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit – Reunions
Bob Dylan – Rough and Rowdy Ways
Neil Young – Homegrown
In a 1975 Rolling Stone interview, Neil called his long-shelved-and-now-finally-released album Homegrown "the darker side to Harvest." With more hindsight, he called it "the missing link between Harvest, Comes a Time, Old Ways and Harvest Moon" in Jimmy McDonough's 2002 Neil Young biography Shakey. Those albums are all on Neil's folkier, more acoustic side, and Homegrown is indeed cut from that cloth. As soon as you hear the opening of "Separate Ways," you're transported right back to the warmth of the Harvest era. It's of the same proto-slowcore variety of that album's opener "Out On the Weekend," but even more haunting and melancholic. Just 30 seconds in, and Homegrown already lives up to the description Neil gave Cameron Crowe of it 45 years ago.
That same mood carries over into second track "Try," which -- like "Separate Ways" -- features The Band's Levon Helm on drums, and Levon really managed to capture the bare-bones, slow-paced drumming style that these types of quietly revolutionary Neil Young songs always demanded. "Try" is also one of two songs on Homegrown with backing vocals by Emmylou Harris (the other being "Star of Bethlehem"), and her soaring voice makes for a truly lovely contrast with Neil's more somber delivery. And as melancholic as those songs are, they've got nothing on the melancholy of the entirely-solo cuts "Mexico" (voice and piano) and "Kansas" (voice, acoustic guitar, and harmonica), or on "White Line," which features Neil, his acoustic, and his harmonica joined only by some lead guitar by The Band's Robbie Robertson. It's on those breathtaking songs where you can really hear why Neil -- coming right off the release of On The Beach -- might have felt like he was digging himself into a hole of dour, depressive music. But all these years later -- now that Neil has cemented his legacy over and over again and proven to be an artist who can evolve and adapt with the times without losing his own uniqueness -- those songs feel like buried treasure, especially for fans who gravitate towards his most hushed material. Full review here.