Slow progress

Not so very long ago, the mere suggestion that Codeine - as magnificent a band as they were, and indeed still are - might be the principal subjects of a feature published by a mainstream UK newspaper would have seemed absurd. And yet - thanks to Stevie Chick - that flight of fancy has become a reality, in the form of a crash course on slowcore, the musical genre for which they became (unwilling) poster boys.

For me, as for many others, slowcore's other cornerstone Low were the gateway drug - in my case, their 1999 album Secret Name. That the Duluth band centred on the partnership of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker transcended their sonic and stylistic roots, particularly on astonishing final LPs Double Negative and Hey What, is undeniable and explains why they don't feature more heavily in Chick's article.

That's not to imply, though, that Codeine are inferior simply by virtue of the fact that their albums don't trace a similar trajectory. I was smitten the moment I heard the stark, spare, devastatingly powerful LP The White Birch, and soon picked up its predecessor Frigid Stars from my favourite hunting ground of the time, the Nottingham branch of Selectadisc (RIP).

As Chick notes, "[t]hey shared their feel for space and tension with Slint, then laying the quiet/loud foundations of post-rock over in Louisville, Kentucky - but Codeine had little interest in the loud part". The band's original drummer Chris Brokaw (also of Come) acknowledges that "[t]here was an austerity to what we were doing". However, the suggestion that they were "almost anti-catharsis" and (in the words of bassist/vocalist Stephen Immerwahr) "anti-epic" is more contentious - The White Birch is, in its own quiet, measured way, as cathartic and epic as albums come.

Codeine imploded shortly after the album's release in 1994, but - as is so often the way - their reputation grew and grew posthumously. Chick detects slowcore's influence on acts as disparate as The For Carnation, Cat Power, Daughter and Lana Del Rey, and I can hear Codeine specifically in metal bands such as Big Brave and Kowloon Walled City.

I'll remain ever grateful to one of Codeine's biggest fans, Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite, for persuading them to reform for the 2012 ATP-curated event I'll Be Your Mirror, which led to a string of other dates, including a show I savoured at Primavera in Porto. And now, with the vinyl reissue of their albums and fresh interest from a new generation of people who've first encountered them soundtracking Netflix series 13 Reasons Why, they're back performing again. However you discover Codeine is irrelevant - what matters is just that you do.

There's a neat coincidence in the fact that it's a cover of Joy Division's 'Atmosphere' that's brought them to wider attention, given that slowcore contemporaries Galaxie 500 contributed their stupendous version of New Order's 'Ceremony' to recent shoegaze compilation Waves Of Distortion. I barely know Galaxie 500 beyond that song, and I don't know Bedhead (another band at the heart of Chick's article) at all - but if they're fit to be talked about in the same breath as Codeine, then it's abundantly clear that I should.

(Fun fact: my introduction to both Low and Codeine came courtesy of a current member of the Eggheads squad. And no, it wasn't Chris Hughes.)