Codeine

"Slo-core", slow-motion rock in a permanent state of despair, was invented by Codeine, formed in Chicago in 1989.

The sound of Frigid Stars (SubPop, 1990) is a kind of exaggeration of the more "spacey" moods of acid rock, a style descending from the austere gothic of the early works of the Swans . John Engle's almost organ-like guitar dissonances, Chris Brokaw's deaf blows in the void, and the languid rumbles of Stephen Immerwahr's bass build hyper-depressed atmospheres for Immerwahr’s own sleepwalking, sorrowful litanies. Pea, D and Cave-In are desperate ballads to rival Nick Drake and Tim Buckley , mental wounds radiating pain. Gravel Bed and Cigarette Machine (to cite two of the less musical tracks) are catalogs of daily horrors adrift in a sea of narcotic chords and beats, psychic devastations. Where the tragic climate reaches lyrical heights, as in New Year's, it almost feels like listening again to Nico Nico's bleak monodies.
Such an emotional "black hole" can have no other reference than itself, indulging in the celebration of its own existential collapse; yet Pickup Song and Old Things are capable of locking into epic crescendos. So arduous and pure is the band's program that Second Chance is almost an avant-garde chamber lied. If the most obvious reference is Galaxie 500, the fatalistic, bored, nihilistic attitude is that of an eighty-year-old Lydia Lunch.

The single Realize, just a bit more melodic and linear, introduced the 1993 mini-album Barely Real (SubPop), containing Jr, and confirms ambitions beyond rock music with the piano sonata titled W.

The second album, White Birch (SubPop, 1994), with Doug Scharin replacing Brokaw (who had moved to Come), emphasizes precisely the most original elements of their sound: the tracks are longer, the tempos even more rarefied, the guitar chords even more essential. The seven minutes of the opening Sea perhaps say everything Codeine has to say today in this art of suffocated minimal events. The main difference compared to the previous album (foreshadowed by the single Tom) is that Immerwahr sings instead of reciting; and this fact alone is enough to make the work more accessible, despite the even more fragmented harmonies. At times (Loss Leader) it seems to fall into a cocktail-lounge country rock, yet their technique of sudden "bursts" in the most lethargic languor manages to enliven even the most "anemic" moments of the record (the instrumental Wird). In some tracks one can also feel what was only hinted at in Frigid Stars: Neil Young’s martial step, though diluted (Vacancy), or Neil Young’s fatalistic chant, though lame (Rumblefish).

The mathematical limit of this "slowcore" music is a track without a title in which the group neither plays nor sings.

When I See The Sun (Numero Group, 2012) is a three disc anthology including everything they recorded as well as rarities.

Dessau (2022), recorded in 1992, between Frigid Stars and The White Birch, but released only 30 years later, contains songs that were later re-recorded.