3 Slow-Build Alternative Rock Songs That Are Worth Waiting For

There are many ways to build a song slowly. You can begin quietly and gradually raise the volume. Or one might play with the tempo, starting with a dirge, then speed up without the listener realizing you’ve increased the beats per minute. However you do it, when it’s done right, it’s one of the greatest moves in all of composerdom.

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So to highlight such moves, here are three slow-build alternative rock songs worth waiting for.

“I Will Possess Your Heart” by Death Cab For Cutie

I admit, Death Cab For Cutie already possessed my heart following back-to-back masterpieces, Transatlanticism and Plans. But when I first heard “I Will Possess Your Heart”, it echoed two of my favorite bassists: The Cure’s Simon Gallup and Eric Avery from Jane’s Addiction. Nick Harmer’s persistent groove propels the track for eight minutes. Meanwhile, singer Ben Gibbard describes a deluded stalker, with sustained tension created by his band’s determined rhythm section.

“A&W” by Lana Del Rey

Lana Del Rey has steadily built one of the most singular alt-pop and Americana catalogs of her time. When she dropped “A&W” in 2023, I just stared at my speakers the first time I listened to it. Then I did the same thing several more times. Together with super-producer Jack Antonoff, Del Rey crafts an epic amalgam of folk, pop, and trap. She sings, “Did you know a singer can still be / Looking like a side piece at thirty-three?” These are just some of the details as “A&W” transitions through musical movements like pages in a diary if that diary had been culled from a seedy dream sequence plotted at the local Ramada.

“Copy Of A” by Nine Inch Nails

In 2013, I played a gig with Ruby Amanfu at Voodoo Fest in New Orleans. Nine Inch Nails, The Cure, and Pearl Jam were the headliners, and it remains one of my favorite gigs I’ve played. Following our set, and after the stage was turned over, the lights changed. In fact, the entire atmosphere changed with the opening synth notes of “Copy Of A”. Trent Reznor and his band began to appear one by one, with the stage lights expanding and then compressing the space around them. The bassist Pino Palladino played a groove so deep you had to be there to feel it test the very nature of your ribcage.

If you see the word “crescendo” written on a musical score, it means the players are directed to increase volume and intensity gradually. On “Copy Of A”, Nine Inch Nails stretches that dynamic marking across a hypnotic five-and-a-half-minute track.

Photo by Xavi Torrent/Redferns