5 out of 5

Produced by: Steve Albini

Label: C//Z Records

It’s on C/Z, so it’s been mastered inside a tin can stuffed with cheap cotton balls, and this is Silkworm during the Phelps era, so you have to have the acquired aural tastes for Joel’s nasally vocals, but damn if this disc doesn’t make a rip-roaring impression, bridging the gaps ‘tween ‘worm’s rawk tendencies, narrative stumble-alongs, and slow-build guitar freakouts to form this massive, emotional slab of… well, the kind of music that only this band was capable of producing.  Later albums were maybe more cohesive; more focused; but In the West’s rawness is something that I didn’t feel kicked back in until the group moved past its Pavement-y Matador era releases, and the youth of the crew at the time of this album gives it a punky earnestness to boot.

The rotating vocalist shtick is very prevalent, and each singer tends to bring a certain flavor to their songs, united by head-bobbing riffs and damnably grooving bass and drum lines: Tim Midgett executes a laid-back blues that maybe is most in sync with latter-era SKWM; Andy Cohen has a more hurried urgency to his tracks; Phelps stretches things out and builds to intense conclusions.  While I’d be tempted to say the first half of the disc is more single-worthy, once you expect the eight-minute pause of middle track Enough is Enough, the way the album pivots to more fleshed out songs afterward becomes an essential element of the experience.

I think the confidence of later releases marks them as the key Silkworm discs, but West is no less worth your time, capturing flashes of each little thing the band could do so well.