Shellac, "Excellent Italian Greyhound"

After seven years of active absence, these unsung noise rockers take another stab at the bloated whale called the music business.  As usual, this trio of studio gurus spits fire and exerts brute force that leaves weaker musicians and more than a few unsuspecting listeners irrevocably harmed with their latest salvo.

 

Touch and Go

As with legendary producer Steve Albini's prior bands, Shellac has never been about the fans but rather in spite of them.  The industry-hardened trio of Albini, bassist Bob Weston, and drummer Todd Trainer make angular, furious music with a merciless, confrontational edge.  With its members spending much of their time assisting other bands in making their albums, Shellac serves as their own infrequent outlet beyond now-impenetrable rock-and-roll resume building.  Their debut, 1994's requisite At Action Park, was a monumental headfuck that sodomized, waterboarded, and indoctrinated to the point where it became impossible not to have an opinion about Shellac.  The albums that followed each have their respective merits, and Excellent Italian Greyhound is no exception.

Opener "The End of Radio," an onslaught of calculated menace that mockingly celebrates the death of the commercial airwaves, finds a pathologically steady bassline, militant snare-dependent rhythms, and incoherent guitar howl skulking behind Albini's vitriol.  His bloodlust for the inherently corrupt and despicable music industry has appeared many times before, most poignantly in a must-read essay titled "The Problem with Music."  But this eight-and-a-half minute venomous eulogy reminds just why Shellac retains such an eager fan base; all parties share a common disdain.  As always, Albini's biting humor often informs these mostly raucous proceedings, as evidenced on the hilarious and boastful "Be Prepared."  Brief and primitive post-punk rockers like the quasi-motivational "Boycott" and the jarring yet evocative "Spoke" are balanced by longer songs where the band exercises an acute sense of restraint.  Like a song in pieces, "Genuine Lulabelle" nearly doesn't attempt to reassemble itself, resulting in sparse guitar plucks and strums interrupted and infiltrated by fleeting fractious bursts of rhythm and even tuneless acapella vocals from a subdued Albini, spoken word poet Ken Nordine, and Internet celebrity Strongbad.  By its final two minutes, the band seems to have found the plot long enough to deliver an oblique though comparatively competent end.

While multi-millionaires like Trent Reznor, Madonna, and the blokes from the increasingly pedestrian Radiohead can afford to snub their noses at the industry, these guys were doing it long before anyone heard one chord of Pablo Honey.  Although Excellent Italian Greyhound wont turn Shellac into MTV darlings, that has always been the furthest thing from these guys' minds.  By making music that they want to listen to themselves, they thrive in the notable category of being one of your favorite band's favorite bands—not that it matters.  After 13 years, Shellac still doesn't give a shit.

samples:

• The End of Radio
• Steady As She Goes
• Genuine Lulabelle