4 out of 5

Label: Matador

Produced by: Steve Albini

‘Developer’ is one of those albums that the appreciation of which defines a fan of a group; it’s by no means an accessible Silkworm disc, readily representative of their guitar freakouts or rock sensibilities or wry lyrics, and yet it contains all of those things in some all-star moments.  It doesn’t have the throttling ramshackle appeal of Firewater, or the more melodic toe-tapping approach of their Touch and Go era albums; it is not the Silkworm disc I think to put on, and yet it’s the one I’m most liable to leave on repeat.  ‘Subtle’ isn’t necessarily the right word: there are still rip-snorting rockers, like ‘Never Met a Man I Didn’t Like,’ and notable toe-tappers, like the zippy bass (or whatever) theme of ‘The Devil is Beating His Wife,’ and there’re certainly a fair load of verbal slumming through tales of tired life stories capped by ribald one-liners.  But, even at a brief 37 minutes, Developer does take its time to earn those peaks.  The album just doesn’t give any intentions of being in a hurry, even when the pace picks up.  This applies to the playing style – captured with Albini’s usual rawness and here sounding so assured and relax – as well as the singing style, which has Cohen and Midgett hitting their relative high notes and talking through their low notes but not stretching for this just unreachable peaks and valleys they occasionally do, and could even be said to be represented by that cover of a cool blue moon; Developer, as probably inadvertently suggested by its title, grows on you over time.  The hooks, the lyrics, they stick, just not in the forefront; it’s a tune you’re half-remembering, but once it’s there it’s there, and every track reveals itself to be a pretty solid one, excepting the way the final two tracks are way over-shadowed by the disc’s blowout track – Sheep Wait For Wolf.

It’s not perfect.  I don’t know if any Silkworm disc is; there’s almost a note of self-defeat built into their m.o. that causes their albums to sort of shrug instead of pushing for some fully realized production.  But Developer – while lacking a distinct Silkworm track – works its magic over time, ‘developing’ into one of the group’s most consistently solid listens.