Codeine - Pickup Song (Glitterhouse)

While many New York bands entered the '90s at breakneck speed, there was an anomaly among them in Codeine. The slowcore scene was invented around this great lumbering beast, and listening to them now, it's still difficult to see who, if anyone, has surpassed them. Bands such as Idaho and Low are fine, but no one could make quiet music as loudly as Codeine. "Pickup Song" begins with some gently plucked guitar and the droney monotone of singer Stephen Immerwahr. Then it arrives. "It" is the woozy sweep of heavily tremeloed guitar that brusquely enters and exits the song throughout its tantalizingly short lifespan. Sounding like it was swiped straight from Kevin Shields' fingertips, and turned right up so it swamps the song whenever it enters the mix, you can almost picture the sheer delight on the faces of the band members when they suddenly had this glorious woosh of noise to add to their armory. But this is Codeine, a band for whom restraint is everything, and, as such, they probably just shrugged their shoulders and bottled up this wondrous new sound, only uncorking it with trademark discretion. In Gus Van Sant's 2002 feature Gerry, Casey Affleck and Matt Damon's characters head off into the desert, looking for an undefinable "thing" that the audience is never privy to. I like to imagine the great arc of guitar that pummels "Pickup Song" to its knees is such a "thing," and when Immerwahr dolefully murmers "Wish I'd never seen your face" he's directly addressing his own creation, starring into a creative graveyard as the realization dawns on him that these things only come along once or twice in anyone's lifetime.