Album: Excellent Italian Greyhound
Artist: Shellac
Genre: Minimalist/Math Rock
Year: 2007
Label: Touch & Go
I’m trying to recall the exact moment I became a fan of Steve Albini. I guess it would have to be the first time I heard Big Black’s Songs About Fucking. It was a gift from a friend who seemed to think I’d like it, not that she told me anything about it before giving it to me. So, I have the album on my iPod. I’m working on something on the computer and am trying to decide what to listen to. I cue up Songs About Fucking, plug it into my dock and walk back to the computer. A second and a half later an unholy squall blasts its way out of the speakers and I turn around to stare at them. The sound was not unlike metal girders grinding against each other with some lunatic screaming things about “The Power of Independent Trucking” buried somewhere in the mix. The drums sounded inhuman (I would later learn that they were generated by Roland the Drum Machine.) I take this in and then realize that something is wrong. I can’t quite be sure but something doesn’t seem quite right about the situation. And then it hits me. It needs to be louder… much louder. I cranked the volume up to max, nearly blew out my speakers and I think reduced my hearing by a couple decibels for the afternoon. This was my introduction to the music of Steve Albini.
For those of you who don’t know or haven’t read Our Band Could Be Your Life, Steve Albini was the driving creative force behind Big Black for five or so years in the mid to late 80’s. He’s a guitarist and sound engineer like no other and is one of my heroes… for some reason. It actually worries some people that I like this guy as much as I do, considering his proclivities for writing songs about slaughtering cattle and alcoholism. But that’s one of the things I like so much about Steve Albini: he’s sarcastic. He’s got one of the blackest senses of humor on the face of the planet and that comes out in his music.
Big Black was a great band but great things must come to an end. After his first bands demise, Albini hooked up with the rhythm section of Scratch Acid to form the disgustingly titled Rapeman. In a world where it’s fairly easy to piss off conservatives, Albini started pushing the buttons of hipsters. The ultimate test was naming his band something as offensive as Rapeman and it worked, people were outraged and completely overlooked the music. It wasn’t as good as Big Black but it showed that Albini was still capable of caustic wit and metallic whiplash guitar attacks. Rapeman came to an end before the 80’s were over and Albini subsequently formed his current band, Shellac, with Todd Trainer and Bob Weston a few years later.
Shellac’s latest release, Excellent Italian Greyhound, is, in my humble opinion, their finest to date. An acerbic assault of twisted steel and sharp aluminum, this record is nine tracks worth of deadpan lyrics and Math Rock belligerence that should satisfy anyone familiar with Albini’s work. It’s not their most accessible listen, that would be either At Action Park or 1000 Hurts, but it’s their most rewarding one. The first track is a demonstration of Shellac’s fondness for unusual song structures. The ambling “The End of Radio” is eight minutes long and barely holds together… or so it seems. There is no chorus, just Albini’s rambling tale of the last man on earth, who also happens to be a DJ, broadcasting his final transmission to an empty world. It’s actually one of the most manic tracks on the album, just not in the music. All the mania is in Albini’s delivery, where he seems to be teetering on the brink of sanity.
The next three tracks are all straight ahead rockers, as straight ahead as you can get with Shellac that is. The best of these is the track “Be Prepared.” The song spends it’s first 40 or so seconds trying to get off the ground before kicking into life, with Albini’s wind-up and release guitar taking the forefront. It’s not long before he barks out “I was born wearing pants!” to which Bob Weston responds, “Be prepared!” The song is pretty funny actually; apparently Albini was also born with $25 in his pockets and already wearing spats and a dickie (whatever the hell that is…)
The other two rockers, “Steady As She Goes” and “Elephant” are also both solid songs. Someone mentioned “Elephant” to me once as being about Fugazi and how they have yet to return from hiatus. I didn’t think much of it until I got two other records, Fugazi’s The Argument and The Evens’ Self-Titled Album. “Elephant references both albums in its title and opening lyrics, with Bob Weston singing “Here… comes… here comes the argument” paralleling the final lyrics of the final song of The Argument. And naming the song “Elephant”? Guess what’s on the cover of The Evens’ Self-Tilted Album. After that though, the reference seems to end because the lyrics of “Elephant” take on a decidedly confusing bent, with both Albini and Weston speak-singing different stories that, on the surface at least, don’t seem to have anything to do with Fugazi. Still, it’s an intriguing riddle.
By far the oddest track on the album though, is the 9 minute + “Genuine Lulabelle” which begins with Albini’s announcement that “You could say that I’m… the Genuine Article.” The band then soldiers into an instrumental section that starts out leisurely before abruptly taking a turn for the urgent. Then. Everything stops. No music. Albini… speaks. What follows is the single most unexpected thing to ever surface on a Shellac album: An A Cappella section. I was stunned too. The unaccompanied Albini tells a tale of a girl called Lulabelle and the subsequent shenanigans she got into. Then, the second most unexpected thing to surface on a Shellac album makes his presence known: Strong Bad. No Joke. And he’s not alone. A deluge of voices, from all those famous voice actors you can’t remember the names of chime in, all of them proclaiming that “what one wants is the real thing, the genuine article: a real Lulabelle.” Eventually, the voices subside, the band kicks in and the song goes wild, Albini’s now shouted lyrics meeting with razor sharp instrumentation. It’s by far the most successful experimental track they’ve done.
There aren’t really any weak tracks on this album. There are good ones, great ones and weird ones. The final four tracks, which includes the actually upbeat instrumental “Kittypants” and Weston’s major label protest song “Boycott”, all fit the bill of the album nicely. Albini and co’s music is challenging, noisy and very original. I highly recommend Shellac, Rapeman and Big Black’s entire discography. But remember, this music is not for the faint of heart and if you’re offended easily or don’t have a tongue to plant in your cheek, you probably should steer clear.
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