Tweez

Slint | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (December 8, 1993)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Touch & Go Records
• ASIN: B0000019KN
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #160,206 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars the fun before the funeral, February 23, 2005

By 

moriarty (nottingham, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tweez (Audio CD)

I don't know, this album always seemed like a group of extremely talented musicians fresh from Hardcore University trying to work out what to do, left in a studio for a week with Steve Albini eating a sandwich next to the microphones. The first song manages the clever trick of sounding like absolutely nothing else you've ever heard, and at the time I first heard it I was caught between laughing and turning it off. The song starts with one of the band complaining about his headphones not working before being swept away by the music, and culminates not long after with what sounds like someone smacking hell out of a radiator with an industrial spring, joyously shouting 'Oh man!'.

I guess that for a one word review you can interchange 'playful' and 'perplexing', as the band sweeps between styles without worrying too much about choruses, structure, or sense. About half of it is very heavily flanged jazz guitar, which I found (by half way through side two) did my head in, just complexity for the sake of it. They then jump straight into two minutes of death metal, only, y'know, good. Weirdly, even then Slint managed to worm something into your head, even if you're not paying attention. I haven't listened to this album in years (although I'm already thinking I should) and yet I can still remember the garbled words '...that's where the river bends, that's where the silo stands, that's where they paint their houses...'. Slint in a nutshell...you always have the profound feeling, even in their most throwaway moments, that something really bad is about to happen.

Despite that, what I was left with from this album was an infectious sense of fun (albeit with something really bad about to happen). Even if I didn't get with all of the music. Like some bands that came after them, the worst offender being Shellac, occasionally the joke's so studied you wonder if it's on you.

The closer 'Rhoda' is the most interesting song, I have absolutely no idea how they make the sounds they do. A longer version was later included on the split single which, if you're reading this review, I imagine you already know about. Fantastically original, striking music, bordering on the symphonic.

If you buy one Slint album, buy Spiderland, but this album is worth your money if you have an open mind and are prepared to smile along. Maybe the best thing is not to give it your full attention. And then five years later you'll be thinking to yourself, 'my god, I still know the lyrics'. And start looking over your shoulder.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars better than spiderland?, November 9, 2003

By 

Mr. Philip F. Markwick "sunman0327" (UK) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tweez (Audio CD)

A lot say that this album is better than spiderland, and they could be right. I myself am not sure that such a distinction could be made, the two albums seem to different from each other in approach to really be compared. It is not as if I listen to Tweez and say to myself; `well they were on to something, but they really perfected in Spiderland'.
Tzeez seems to be the product of anxious brilliant minds, it sweeps in and out of different styles and approaches to subject to the point that it might seem disjointed in a way that Spiderland isn't. Tweeze feels contrived (I mean that in the most positive way) where Spiderland feels organic and intuitive. Where as Tweez is a cerebral album, you will feel it your mind, it will other path of meditation for the active listener and then provide `blocks' to the meditation that will confound the passive listeners. It will switch `modes' or deliver musical abstracts that are complex and intelligent. It will slip between careful parody and complete seriousness. I did not know what to make of this album the first time i heard it, where as my connection with Spiderland was instantiations. But this is not album where the band are are searching for the mode that is Spiderland, Slint were simply in a different place, thinking in a different way.

Tweez, is in my personal opinion, one the greatest pieces of music ever created.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Important, June 23, 2002

By 

Ronald Battista (Colorado Springs, CO) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tweez (Audio CD)

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.