Seaweed – Spanaway – Review

Seaweed

Spanaway (Hollywood)
by Joshua Brown

I just watched the flick Shawshank Redemption. In the film, the wrongly accused and abused prisoner, played by Tim Robbins, dreams of escape to the Pacific shores of Mexico, where the natives say the ocean has no memory. The music of Seaweed mirrors this ideal. The seaweed stretches its soul from the ocean floor up to just beneath the ocean surface. It offers no resistance to the ebb and flow of the lunar pull on the salt water. The human metaphor called time has no place in its equation.

The music of Seaweed has no linear memorability. I’m never quite sure, although the words are intelligible, what exactly they’re singing about, nor could I ever repeat a single riff from a song of theirs if called upon to do so. And I’m perfectly content in this inability, ’cause I think Seaweed are a tremendous and original band. Others have tried their hand at this style of post-hardcore, but to less effect (Samiam and early Jawbox are two examples I can cite off the top of my head). Each Seaweed recording goes further toward perfecting the untouchable style, just getting more tight, powerful, and tensely sexual.