Artist	Song
Low	I Remember
from Secret Name (1999)
Red House Painters	Song for a Blue Guitar
from Songs for a Blue Guitar (1996)
Codeine	D
from Frigid Stars (1991)
Smog	Chosen One
from Julius Caesar (1993)
Elliott Smith	Speed Trials
from Either/Or (1997)
Sparklehorse	Sad and Beautiful World
from Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot (1995)
Cat Power	Top Expert
from Myra Lee (1996)
American Music Club	What the Pillar of Salt Held Up
from Everclear (1991)
The For Carnation	Get and Stay Get March
from Promised Works (2007)
Ida	Back Burner
from I Know About You (1996)
IDAHO	Creep
from People Like Us Should Be Stopped - Live Vol. 1 (2005)
Mojave 3	Love Songs On the Radio
from Ask Me Tomorrow (1999)
Damien Jurado	Ohio
from Rehearsals for Departure (1999)
Scud Mountain Boys	Grudge
from Massachusetts (1996)
Bedhead	Bedside Table
from What Fun Life Was (2001)
Spain	Untitled #1
from The Blue Moods of Spain (2006)
Arab Strap	One Day, After School
from Philophobia (1998)
The Black Heart Procession	It's a Crime I Never Told You About the Diamonds in Your Eyes
from 2 (1999)
Radar Bros.	Shifty Lies
from The Singing Hatchet (1999)
Rex	Morning
from C (1996)

Comment:

Along with their even-more-glum cousins in sadcore, slowcore’s doyens of downbeat s-l-o-w-w-w-w-e-d their tempo to a heart-stopping crawl, paring arrangements to bare-bones minimalism. And true to their name, the sadcore corps rubbed a little dried-tear salt in their freshly opened veins with a dollop of misery. In the slow-mo emotional train wreck of “D,” Codeine singer Stephen Immerwahr catalogues every element of his life like a report card, assigning each “subject” a grade of . . . you guessed it. The Red House Painters’ Mark Kozelek (with backing vocalist Stephanie Finch) goes all Mazzy Star-dreamy in the crystal-eggshell fragility of “Song for a Blue Guitar,” a lonely, late-night lover’s last waltz. And Red House Painters’ Bay Area doppelganger (and mentor), American Music Club, haunts without histrionics in the damaged-soul introspection of “What the Pillar of Salt Held Up,” as founder Mark Eitzel barely whispers over a gorgeous, reverb-drenched acoustic guitar. From Elliott Smith to Cat Power, we’ll bring you the doom and gloom that made slowcore even darker than Spinal Tap’s famed song in D minor, “the saddest of all keys.”

Feedback: