Tweez

If the answer is yes, go out and pick this up pronto! Although he only produced this record, his fingerprints, thoughts, saliva, and influence are all over it! Slint offers their own style of music, but you can hear Mr Albini in the background yelling at them and pushing them in the direction he wanted them to go. Okay, you can't literally hear him yelling, but you know what I mean. For a style of music so few have attempted and done successfully, Slint gets props for giving me more of this noise/oddness that I've been craving.

Arrived on time and exactly as expected. really good album

This is the other Slint album. It came out before Spiderland, and is more raw and less obsessed with pirate stories. It sounds a little bit like Shellac, which is not at all a bad thing. If you like Slint, and you should, you should buy this album.

I don't think it is really accurate to say that Spiderland is a *better* album than Tweez. They are just completely different. I agree with the other review that you hear a lot of Big Black influence on Tweez. Not so much on Spiderland. Spiderland's production is tighter than Tweez, yes. And the lyrics are stories, not anecdotes - it's more melodic, more experimental.Spiderland takes you on a journey.Tweez is more of an angsty album, it's raw and aggressive. Lots of noise. It's great! It gets your adrenaline going. I heard Spiderland first, instantly fell in love with it. I would have liked more albums ala Spiderland. But I was just as happy to have found their first album, Tweez. I do admitt that I don't have the same connection with Tweez as I do Spiderland (hence minus a star). It is pretty much the opposite of Spiderland but equally enjoyable, for a different mood/mind set. You have to decide for yourself if that is a good thing. I think it's great when you have a band that can take you in two completely different directions like that. We are also talking about Tweeze being released in 1989 and Spiderland following it up in 1991.I know this is not the right genre for this, so please don't flame me - but since someone else brought up Nirvana *hides*.. To say that Spiderland is better than Tweez is like saying "Nevermind" is better than "Bleach". (ummn I liked Bleach much better, but that has nothing to do with _this_ review!) When it's obvious, to me at least, that the musicians were still developing where they wanted to go with their sound(s). Music grows and changes, that is what it is supposed to do. However, out of the two albums, I would say that Spiderland is my favorite and if I were introducing someone to Slint - I'd give them Spiderland. But that really depends on the person. If they were really into Big Black, I'd give them Tweez first. It depends on if you're feeling "grrrr" or "swoony". For lack of better terms. yeah, real punk rock of me. ; >I really get into listening to Tweez not only for it's own merits, but also to experience what Spiderland did eventually grow out of. I think every fan can appreciate that.If you like Slint, you should also check out Aerial M (multi-instrumentalist David Pajo, formerly of Tortoise, Slint, Stereolab & others, is Aerial M.). If you haven't already, go pick up Tortoise: "Millions Now Living Will Never Die". And Big Black fans should give a listen to Babyland - "A Total Let Down" &/or "Who's Sorry Now".If you like Slint, you should buy this album. You can never have enough Slint, and there isn't much to begin with. I also recommend grabbing any/all Slint singles you can find.

independent band. Tweez is an otherworldly experience. It sounds like nothing you've really heard before. Jazzy, clanking white noise, god only knows what some of the bangings and janglings on this album really are. At one point, it sounds like someone tips over a china shelf. This band actually sounds like their name. Very slinty. All the songs are named after their parents, and one bandmember's dog as well. Produced by Steve Albini, whose influence via Big Black is obvious. In the first song, you can hear one of the band members complaining about their headphones to him. It always cracks me up when I listen to it, such a weird way to start an album...as he resigns himself to his broken headphones, the band suddenly pounds into action, letting you know to buckle up. Musicianship is amazing- especially when you consider how young these kids were. This is the superior record of their three.

With very good reason, Slint's 1991 swansong Spiderland has been cited consistently as one of the most important releases of the 1990s. Its quiet, yet fierce passion was totally unlike either the overproduced pop of the 1980s or the pompous grunge and ultra-mechanical techno that would dominate the 1990s. On songs like "Don, Aman" and "Washer", Slint created romantic meditations of deep despair and backed them up with some remarkable dynamics that made for the most amazing emotion that no band before or since has equalled.Before "Spiderland", Slint had released one previous album titled "Tweez" that was picked up by their Touch and Go label after being released on Jennifer Hartman Records. "Tweez" has itself received considerable acclaim, though never so much as its fabled successor. However, for those who are interested in Slint as a precursor of post-rock, "Tweez" for the most part is best described as rather disappointing because much of it, apart from the spoken vocals of Brian McMahan, is in fact very generic thrash metal with none of the amazingly beautiful acoustic touches that allowed "Spiderland" and even the Slint EP to move amazingly far from the generally noisy and overblown character of such music. Such a song as "Warren" is a perfect illustration: even the vocals could easily come out of the most annoying clichés of death metal because McMahan speaks in such a way that he comes of like an announcer. Even the tempo changes are copied from other artists of the genre. "Ron" is very similar in the way it moves from a slow piece to thrash and McMahan screams in a way that could be most heavy metal singers. Even the lighter "Nan Ding" never manages to catch fire like Slint were soon to do, and "Carol" is no advance on "Ron".On the other hand, there are tracks such as "Pat" on which the basis with which Slint would during the rest of their recording career make some amazing music is firmly in place if never so well developed as on the epic songs of their second album. The touching "Darlene" is similarly good and is the most similar track to "Spiderland" here: indeed the acoustic guitars sound much more "spidery" than anything on their second album. When Slint could integrate the two styles they play on the various tracks of "Tweez", we would soon see something that could hardly be expected here. On the whole, though, "Tweez" must be rated a disappointment, with far too much generic thrash - a style I will admit to having distaste for.