Schnipper’s Slept On
- story THE FADER
Each Tuesday, FADER editor Matthew Schnipper highlights an underappreciated recent release he thinks we need to know about. This week it’s Little Claw’s “Race to the Bottom” 7-inch. Listen to “Race to the Bottom” below, buy the 7-inch from
Fusetron (hurry, they only made four hundred) and read Schnipper’s thoughts on the record after the jump.
I got an email from a friend of a friend who has colitis and whose doctors are presenting him with the same full removal of his colon surgery option that I had when I was 13-years-old. He asked me how it had affected my life, what the recovery was like. There was a lot of disease Inside Baseball talk between us that is both gross and not interesting, but my ultimate conclusion to him was that I could not imagine my life if I had not had surgery. We were speaking from a purely physical point of view, but I realized soon after that the effect on my life the few years I spent sick has a lot greater practical implications to my state as a person. Of course there are the natural growths that come from young pain, but the more practical implication is that I got really into music because I had a lot of free time because I was sick and missed a lot of school. When I was well enough to go to Barnes and Noble, my mom or dad would drive me there and I would buy a lot of magazines and books about music, as my nascent interest was just building. Different magazines and books opened me up to different sects, but the steadiest link that forged was everything I learned through Punk Planet, mostly about riot girl bands and a bunch of other things I don’t like much anymore. But I researched everything I read about fiercely and ordered compilations because that was how I could hear the most bands at once. I became somewhat obsessed with Kill Rock Stars via Bikini Kill and of all the different music that has cycled in and out of my life this ruff buzz is the sound that has stayed consistent. That is why I like Little Claw.
“Race to the Bottom” is two and-a-half minutes long and it is on a 7-inch with an ugly cover with a weird drawing. It sounds like they are singing through a faraway harmonica, playing with broken strings. Do you think in do-it-yourself culture there was an implication that you should do it? Or was it just an encouragement that if you choose to do it, you could go it alone? I have picked up a guitar a few times and the silver strings cut my fingers; I couldn’t do it. I don’t get the feeling Little Claw knows much better but they figured it out not on my behalf, but on their desire’s. This is what happens if you get sick and decide to spend your time holed up at home practicing, semi-professional amateur. We just went in different directions. I’m punk, Little Claw is punk. But I bet their fingers bleed and mine never do.
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- posted on Oct 7, 2008 in SLEPT ON
- tags experimental, Little Claw, rock
