or better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age. That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.

Two summers ago, I spent all of my time either sleeping or lying around listening to music. When the hectic punk rock and jilted indie rock (read: Pavement) became too much for me, I set out in search of the mellowest music around. After Sparklehorse’s ‘Good Morning Spider’ proved to be too erratic, with the tempo almost doubling and then cutting in half every other song, and the styles varying just as wildly, I turned to the internet. Several random searches later, I ended up at the Southern Records website, which offered a plethora of musical styles; with all the indie sensibility I had come to trust. It was there that I was introduced to the infamous ‘post-rock’, Slint’s bizarre rhythms, June of 44’s shouted nonsense, and Rodan’s manic-depressive blasts of noise. These CDs were fun novelties, a welcome change from the everyday music I had listened to before, but grew harsh and pretentious with time.

One of the records that I had purchased during my post-rock period was Codeine’s ‘The White Birch’. My first impression of the album was not a good one. It was humorously slow, throughout the entire record. How could any band play that slow for so long? There was no immediate quality to it, no sudden, inexplicable bursts of energy. This record, unlike the others, lacked that certain abrasive quality that drove me to the post-rock genre, it was this absence, though, that brought me back.

Codeine has to be the most appropriately named band ever. Their music takes over your body as the drug does (so I am told), seizing control from your body, and freezing you in the moment. The murky production does not let you get over it until the album ends, a surprisingly short forty-five minutes later. You struggle to get up, disappointed that it is over, and surprised that you have spent nearly an hour entranced in this hypnotic music.

The re-discovery of this album caused me to miss many weekends, listening to this cd in my room on repeat. I have not since discovered a work, even among Codeine’s catalog that has come close to imitating this kind of slow paced sonic bliss, though some of Low’s better stuff does come close. The White Birch is a delicate, meandering piece of slo-core greatness.