here's another crazy part:
Concern for a loved one also fueled âWasher.â The most obvious outlier on Spiderland, itâs built around a simple cyclical form and â for the first and only time in the Slint catalog â conventional singing, in the form of McMahanâs fragile croon. Even on a record that feels altogether warmer and more emotionally resonant than Tweez, itâs a startling departure.
The song takes the form of a goodnight address to a distant lover, encouraging them to make peace with their sadness (âWash yourself in your tears/And build your church on the strength of your faithâŚâ) and gradually taking on a more pleading tone (âPlease, donât let go/Donât let this desperate moonlight leave me with your empty pillowâ). Later in the song, over a tension-building interlude, the lyrics end on a note of dreamlike oblivion â âMy head is empty/My toes are warm/I am safe from harmâ â before the band comes crashing back in for Pajoâs screaming solo.
When he wrote the song, McMahan was thinking of his girlfriend at the time. He says that both she and he had dealt with mental-health issues in their immediate families, and that these had started to manifest in them as well. âWe both experienced depression really early in our lives, and it was a feature of our relationship. Iâm not going to say it was unhealthy, but it was something that we just had to deal with, and we were young and we were figuring it out,â he says.
After high school, both McMahan and his girlfriend moved away to attend different colleges. âWe both pretty quickly felt isolated, got depressed, and there was a point at which I remember leaving Evanston, where I had been going to school, and getting on a Greyhound bus kind of spur of the moment to go to Madison, Wisconsin, where she was in school, because I was really concerned about her,â he says. âThe lyrics or some of the tone of âWasherâ was definitely couched in a sense that, you know, weâre all fragile people. There were no illusions in her family DNA [that] being upset and expressing your feelings, even if itâs physically or through violence, was definitely on the table. ⌠That sort of fear definitely led to some of that song in some ways. I was worried about her and I was worried about the idea of suicide, and physically I was not in the same place as her.
âAnd then on the flip side,â he continues, âthe interlude, the quiet, more breathy part, itâs kind of the way I was taught to respond to intense emotion, or things that were not neat and tidy, just to kind of disconnect. Thatâs how I was raised: [Mock-stoically] âEmotions are bad, and expression of intense feelings is not appropriate ever.'â
www.rollingstone.com
