Codeine were the sound of defeat. Of resignation, complete submission, days spent buried under a duvet, shutting out the world behind closed curtains. To define them as miserable is to miss the point slightly…they captured the moment at which failure is something to be embraced; they found a numbing, narcotic comfort in no longer trying to succeed. A rather beautiful, rather dangerous state. You could, as I found out, listen to them a bit too much.

Some bands are hard to pin down. Codeine were not one of those bands. Over the course of two early nineties albums and an EP, Stephen Immerwahr (bass, vocals, songs, always his band), John Engle (guitar) and a succession of drummers, most notably Chris Brokaw, nailed their sound and their purpose so absolutely and so repeatedly that there quickly came a point where there was nothing more left to be said. I mean, what are you going to do? Hitch a ride on the Nirvana bandwagon? Get a Chemical Brothers remix? Cheer the hell up?

Or, much better, don’t hang around. For nigh-on twenty years, until a brief reunion tour to mark an exquisite re-release of those records, Codeine were a treasured memory for the relative few who’d had their lives blessed by those stately-slow songs…and an occasional name-to-drop in reviews of those who followed in their footsteps. You get the sense that they were a little surprised by the fervour their re-emergence generated, perhaps unaware of just how closely some of us clutch their music to our hearts, even now. Christ, some of those song titles are enough to send shivers down my spine, reference points for a desperately personal emotional space that little else has touched…

Frigid Stars dropped out of nowhere, it seemed. History might have it that these were the Sub Pop years, but if you’d been reared on Big Black, pre-bubblegum Sonic Youth, early Swans and all, Sub Pop seemed like a trad-rockist throwback, of no interest whatsoever. Codeine releases are, I’m almost certain, the only Sub Pop records I own…and they stood in stark, bleak contrast to the party around them. Intrigued by a Melody Maker review, I fell instantly and irrevocably in love with their debut album; it needed no explanation, no decoding, nothing but a loud stereo and empty days to fill.

Rock speaks easily of anger, frustration and disappointment. Codeine stripped it of catharsis and thrill, sucked it dry of sound and fury; for all the careful application of volume, there’s barely a raised voice or an abrasive note on these records, hardly a hint of protest. Virtually no ego either, no cloying sentiment or hand-on-heart sincerity. They were left with something taut and sparse, mercilessly slow, hardly able to support its own weight. The enduring genius of it all was to manage to pin memorable, frequently gorgeous songs onto that bare skeleton: the peaks of this limited discography rise far above slow-for-slow’s-sake, a classic melodic sensibility melted all over some very disciplined formal innovation.

“All their songs sound the same – like it’s all one song – but it’s a great song,” quips Sub Pop’s Jonathan Poneman on the sleevenotes. Which is a good line, and broadly true, but neglects how carefully composed much of this music is…and how many heart-stopping moments it conjures up. Even as its first verse begins, “Gravel Bed” stumbles sideways as if unable to stand up straight. The majestic “Pickup Song”, all swooping slide-bass, foregoes a second verse and just plunges head-first into a wall, finishing with the line “Wish I’d never seen your face…” and the kind of anti-crescendo which could belong only to this band. Something of a signature, that…Codeine songs have a habit of ducking out quietly and softly, as if shying away from the spotlight before it shines too brightly.

This is emphatically pop music, rock music, accessible and memorable; Codeine were never a hard band to listen to, as long as you didn’t mind living with the all-encompassing sadness they seemed able to summon up. You should start with Frigid Stars and the subsequent Barely Real EP, which contains one of the great three-track winning streaks: the strung-out, blasted “Realize” sliding into the even-more-blasted “Jr”, based around a blistered wreck of a riff, and then into “Barely Real”. The latter is still astonishing, an object lesson into how to turn an essentially simple little tune into a thing of heartbreaking beauty by placing every single note just so, buffing every surface to just the right lustre, balancing it all on a knife-edge. The last of the three minutes, in which nothing happens to perfection, is worth taking a whole day off work for.

If those first two records are a little patchy, The White Birch is monumental and absolute and impassive. Putting aside occasional attempts at broadening their palette, Codeine recorded in monotone, capturing a snow-bound blankness that’s somehow as romantic as it is hopeless. It has no variety whatsoever, no light and shade; the quiet is as steely and cold as the loud. It’s as if they’ve decided to push their trademark sound as far as it can go, then leave it there for the crows.

Whereas its predecessors connect me immediately with a particular time in my life, The White Birch has none of those vivid associations. I played it to death on its release, but it isn’t a record which lends itself to nostalgia; time seems to be frozen in its presence rather than drift into memory. It has no “Pickup Song”, no “Barely Real”. Rather, it’s that very rare thing: a near-flawless record by a band in absolute control, focused inward on capturing what it has to say completely and forever. Every single note counts and is played as if the entire record depends on it; every bit of wool, tangle and fuzz has been stripped away. There are reference points for that kind of austerity in electronica, in metal, perhaps elsewhere too…but in the middle ground of American rock, it represents the most astonishing act of single-minded discipline.

As ever, though, it has the songs to turn what might be theoretical posturing into a record you couldn’t bear to live without. It has great songs, nine of them…including, for me, the song to which all of the others were leading: “Vacancy”, about which I have nothing smart to say whatsoever. “Don’t even try to justify…there’s no way…to justify….“ It ends with “Smoking Room”, slow even by their standards…and yet gently uplifting, as if someone’s raised your crestfallen chin with a caring hand. With one of Immerwahr’s loveliest lyrics (“The world is frozen now…it glitters, sparkles and shines…”), Codeine fade to a silence which seems so much more absolute than when the record began.

That was it. There were no messy attempts to follow The White Birch; the band’s subsequent parting was private and quiet and, it seems, as amicable as these things can be. The reunion tour was appropriately concise; the discipline and restraint and good judgement evident in every detail of the band’s sound applied with equal rigour to its place in history. They’re gone again already. That’s how it should be: there’s no need for embellishment, addition or explanation; the opportunity to hear them again, to thank them again, is wonderful but ultimately unnecessary. The post-White Birch silence is mercifully undiminished and unblemished.

There’s no cult of personality around these records, no shape-throwing guitar heroes or confessional singer-songwriters, no Curtis or Cobain or whoever. Codeine removed themselves from personal autobiography completely. You don’t need to know the lives and the stories behind these songs…there’s nothing hidden, their depth is still and clear. If you don’t understand them instinctively, then, frankly, you need to stay in more. The sound of defeat, a singular and resolute sound.

You couldn’t listen to Codeine forever. You couldn’t be in Codeine forever. But, my heavens, how vital that they existed, how unerringly they fulfilled that need. Whatever they do in the rest of their lives, I wish them peace and I wish them happiness. They’ve given me a lot of both.

Ian Grant