3. EvergreenEvergreen

This is one of the bigger Slint links on my list, because Evergreen’s drummer is Britt Walford [co-founder, early drummer and guitarist for Slint] who was one of my closest friends throughout the 1980s. We went to middle school and high school together, and then hung out after school non-stop. He has such a specific, creative force. Really, there is nobody like him. This is from a time when he began to feel maybe there was something purer and simpler in music than what he was doing in Slint. Evergreen doesn’t resemble Slint in any way, shape or form. There might be a drum tone people recognise, but the music’s much more primal, and their songs are like dirty little Nelson Algren stories. His books, like A Walk On The Wild Side, The Man WIth The Golden Arm, and the short story collection, The Neon Wilderness, are immediately rewarding, and bring in this underbelly filth, and this agitprop purpose, to literature. They remind you that things we have going on in our cores that we may think are unique to us as individuals are the same that are felt by Polish immigrants, or addicts, or factory workers.

Evergreen’s recordings also recall their live show, which was mystical, huge and painfully good. These live shows could be in a basement of somebody’s house, a club that existed for three months before it folded, a Sunday all ages show, an over-21 club that we had to figure out ways to sneak into. Or for a while, in a pizzeria run by this strange crusty old man named Charlie. That pizzeria is where all the punk and hardcore shows happened for a few years. That’s just where you went!