Audiopile Review: Slint’s Tweez hits the 35 year mark and slams back into the world with this newly remastered edition. An album ripe for reappraisal, Tweez has lived in the shadow of Spiderland for much of the last three decades, suffering a similar fate as albums like Isn’t Anything, Pod, Bleach or On Avery Island—amazing albums released prior to wildly influential followups that have since sucked up all the oxygen in the room. Spawning out of the dissolved teenaged hardcore band Squirrel Bait, the arrival of Slint in the late ‘80s marks a turning point in US underground rock, the quartet crashing right at the busy intersection of noise-rock, punk and, of course, the then yet unnamed US style of post-rock, the latter becoming the siren call of their beloved Spiderland. An early recording by Steve Albini (credited here as Some Fuckin Derd Niffer), Tweez is now rightly held as one of the archetypal albums of the “Albini sound”, that raw, “in the same room” feel that many would soon lust after. And for Slint, Albini was able to translate their razor-sharp assault perfectly on record. The metal-adjacent plucked guitar tones, hammering riffs of shrill distortion, and the muscular rhythm section don’t fight for front billing so much as create a unified sonic wall to tend with. Its beefy aesthetic would gain more prominence through the ’90s, soon to be echoed in bands like Jesus Lizard, Unwound and Albini’s own Shellac. Sure, Spiderland deserves its flowers, but Tweez is back in print, ready for some shine.

Originally recorded by Steve Albini and released in 1989, Slint’s debut album “Tweez” has been remastered by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Studio from the original analogue master tapes. That features on LP1 of this 35th anniversary edition. LP2 is the “tweethan mix”. Per Ethan Buckler (Slint bassist on “Tweez”): “finally – after thirty-five long years – the other guys in Slint decided to be nice to me and let me have my “Tweez” remix. I complained incessantly back in the day about how the Albini production style ruined our first recording”. In 2023, Ethan took the original multi-track recordings to a local studio in Louisville. Upon handing the engineer a copy of a pre-“Tweez” Slint practice tape, he said, “make it sound like this”. LP2 is the result. Limited edition of 3138 hand-numbered opaque white 180 gram 2LP with liner notes by Steve Albini and Ethan Buckler.