Shellac - A controlled explosion

Thin, derelict, bespectacled, graceless, Steve Albini is one of the decisive figures of the alternative rock landscape of the last two decades.

Born in 1962 in Pasadena, California, to immigrants from Turin, he moves practically to the opposite end of America, to Chicago, where, between the ages of 18 and 20, he works as a music critic and frequents the city's hardcore and noise underground. In step with his growing means and abilities, he becomes the patron of dozens of unknown and extreme bands, occasionally lending himself to productions (relatively) aimed at a wider audience to pad out his wallet a bit.

With Big Black and Rapeman, Albini embodies two of the most "extreme" experiences of the 80s. The sounds are synthetic and distorted, unpleasant, anti-melodic, suffering and apathetic at the same time. And the lyrics possess a hyperrealism that ends up being transfigured by an excess of nausea. His is a metaphysics of nausea and disgust, an "aesthetics of the ugly" that every now and then remembers to conjure up beauty (a riff, a hint of melody), but only to make its submersion and suffocation within the tangle of brute reality all the more desperate and searing.

Once these two incendiary adventures were over, Albini withdraws from the scene for five years, limiting himself to his work as a producer. A symbolic gesture, as a protest against the record industry. When he resurfaces, in 1994, he's leading a new band. And for American rock it's still a shock.

Albini forms Shellac (or Shellac of North America) together with Todd Trainer and Bob Weston, joining the procession that a year later would be christened post-rock. As if that pioneering title weren't enough, by the late 90s critics will place them among the inventors of an offshoot of post-rock itself: math-rock. Listening to forerunners Shellac, Don Caballero, or the early June Of '44, the definition of the genre becomes clear. Mathematical rock, numerical calculation giving rise to well-defined, often jagged geometries; whirlwinds of guitar, bass and drums climb and overlap in imposing scaffolding, reshaping themselves according to swings of nervous tension that, amid the chaos, animate rigorous architectures, sketching out often apocalyptic, noisy, breathtaking scenarios or crafting fragments of angular melody. Fundamental requirements: a technical skill and cerebral quality that recall progressive and King Crimson, but wedded to a post-hardcore or noise aesthetic, drawing from bands like Minutemen, Black Flag, Big Black (Albini's own), Bitch Magnet and Bastro (both featuring David Grubbs). Math-rock, perhaps even more than post-rock, relies on overabundant rhythm sections and, like post-rock, makes little to no use of vocals.

But let's get back to Shellac, a trio that plays sandpaper noise. The distinctive feature is Albini's style, the bare, abrasive, percussive noise of his guitar. A true school of minimal rhythm that contrasts with Don Caballero's virtuosity, yet is itself an expression of technical perfection. Albini is synonymous with a blind passion for analog, a dispassionate love for raw simplicity, and a fetishistic cult of live, direct-to-tape recording.

Shellac is among the first to take a political stand against the CD format, subordinating it to 180 grams of solid virgin vinyl. The albums, all recorded live in the studio, demonstrate Steve's incredible talents as a director, who charismatically steers these psychodramas over a rhythm section that is a boulder, rarely restrained in tone. He favors Travis Bean guitars, uses copper picks, and together with Weston (producer of Sebadoh, June Of '44) meticulously oversees the sound engineering.

Albini's style remains an unmistakable signature to this day. A living icon, the Californian genius not only wrote the history of the 80s-90s avant-garde, but also forcefully influenced the entire rock scene, producing or recording landmark bands of the last twenty years: the likes of Slint, Dirty Tree, Neurosis, Fugazi, Pixies, the Nirvana of "In Utero", the early PJ Harvey, Uzeda, Jesus Lizard and the latest Joanna Newsom.

With Shellac, in the recording phase, Albini creates devastating, claustrophobic walls of dissonance, cutting bursts of guitars played like jackhammers. Dark atmospheres, paranoid deserts, nervous jolts bordering on epileptic, lethal riffs like blades that maim with the blind fury of a homicidal maniac, schizophrenic surges and primordial seismic eruptions.

Ungainly as an elephant, heavy as early Helmet (albeit in an even more aseptic guise and without the latter's dynamics), the trio literally assaults its instruments, bending them to the rhythmic-noise malady. Compared to his previous projects, Shellac represents a huge step forward. The noise fury seems compressed; the guitars, more mature, used as percussion, sketch out, together with bass and drums (also signed in blood in Albini's style), obsessive and schizoid atmospheres, this time marked by extreme economy, polished with maniacal surgical precision.

Albini does everything he can to play guitar with one finger, and possibly on a single fret, achieving a sound that's as bare-bones, elemental and dry as it is abrasive and palpable. A punch in the face. The seemingly aseptic sound is the result of precise calculations, in the choice of instrumentation, in the construction of the song's geometries and in the emphasis placed on the performance as captured live. Shellac's records exude an instrumental realism that reeks of the concert hall.

Albini's dark humour reaches its definitive coronation here. It comes through in the titles and lyrics, less perverse now, at times tales of ordinary life focused on emotions, behaviours and universal truths, occasionally political, other times ironically parodic, but always violently aggressive. "This is a sad fucking song, we'll be lucky if I don't burst out crying." "Squirrel song." The vocals, which used to consist of wild screams and howls, become less violent with Shellac (especially on the second album), more expressionist, even sketching out actual melodies.

Shellac debuted with three 7" vinyl singles. The Rude Gesture – A Pictorial History (1993, Touch & Go): a catchy bassline, guitar feedback and a nervy final explosion. Almost melodic verses alternate with a noise-driven pace, a back-and-forth of fullness and emptiness; "Rambler Song" is screamed and thunderous like early Helmet; "Billiard Player Song" is an imposing architecture of nerves, sobs, hypnotic turns and an almost melancholic Albini.

Uranus is "Shellac Record#2" (1993, Touch & Go): while "Doris" is still a noise track, "Wingwalker" is pure din; dissonances and hysterical shards follow the hammering bass in a controlled chaos of repressed violence. Two essential records, they introduce the sound that would later be codified on the masterpiece At Action Park. The third 7", The Bird is The Most Popular Finger (1994, Drug City), anticipates the album: "XVI" is essentially a demo version of "Pull The Cup"; "Admiral Song" is a version of "The Admiral".

Finally, At Action Park (1994, Touch & Go) arrives, the band's manifesto. As happened on "Billiard Player Song", during the opening seconds of "My Black Ass" Albini mercilessly ravages the guitar; he sounds like a man possessed chasing an impossible rhythm, yet in reality his guitar spasms fit perfectly with the bass and drum entries. Right from the start, the synthesis of this gem is laid out: the constant dialogues between the three musicians and passages that are as essential as they are unpredictable; the emotional crescendos come from instruments being added and subtracted, fullness and emptiness alternating, bursts that halve, triple and so on. However rudimentary, the phrasing and seemingly improvised passages on these tracks remain etched in memory, complete, immortalized in their perfection.

Not a single flaw here should be changed: in a bare-bones geometry of the unbuildable, Albini & co. are tightrope walkers of a new morse-code language; they tear up rock's old dictionaries to codify their own primordial jargon. "Pull The Cup" plays call-and-response between guitar and drums, then lets a few notes peek through. The tribalism of "Crow" is an emotional crescendo built on the dialogue between guitar, drums and voice. A schizoid delirium is boxed up in "Song Of The Minerals". "A Minute" is a concentrate of post-hardcore violence. "The Idea Of North" is an atmospheric, melodic gem, whispered almost imperceptibly by a histrionic Albini. Closing things out, "Il Porno Star" coughs up a drumbeat over four guitar strums (always the same), before locking into a vaguely Middle Eastern groove; a long schizophrenic improvisation brings to a close one of the absolute masterpieces of 90s rock.

After an album like this, the wait seems interminable.

Live in Tokyo (1994, Nux Organization) was released only in Japan, documenting a 1993 concert; Billiardspielerlied/Mantel (1995, Ubershall Records) is a 7" vinyl; 95 Jailbrake (1995, Skin Graft) is a track on a double 7" AC/DC tribute; "Copper Song" appears on the compilation "Ground Rule" (1995, Actionboy/Divot Records); "Killers" is on the compilation "Lounge Ax" (1996, Touch & Go); "The Futurist/Movement" (1997, private pressing), a vinyl pressed in 779 copies for friends of Albini (all credited on the cover), is noise in ten movements, written as accompaniment for a Canadian dance company; a learned experiment surprisingly rich in samples. The Soul Sound Single (1997, Touch & Go) is a split 7" with Mule.

The following album, Terraform (1998, Touch & Go), opens quietly with two bass notes that seem to want to keep us on edge a while longer; Albini first weaves half-melodic vocals, then a light guitar line. Just when we think the record has frozen in place, noise-driven fury explodes, clattering away. "Disgrace" is magnificent: two slide bass notes swing back and forth against blistering guitar volleys.

Between post-hardcore echoes of early Slint ("This Is A Picture"), an unusual near-blues-stoner regularity ("Canada"), fury doled out in small doses dragged along by sobbing drums ("Mouthpiece") and ultra-cerebral passages that embrace Fugazi-like sounds ("Rush Job"), we arrive at "House Full Of Garbage". Steve's delivery, more theatrical than ever, takes centre stage, the noise fades into the background, and the painful torment ends unresolved, without violent bursts. We'll only have time to hear the joyful punk gallop of "Copper", which for the first time finds Albini grappling with actual singing.

Although less compact and devastating than its predecessor, Terraform has one great merit: it pushes beyond the sound codified on At Action Park, adding new stylistic shades and even attempting to forge a new kind of song.

1000 Hurts (2000, Touch & Go) on one hand picks up where Terraform left off, and on the other pushes Shellac's avant-garde, mathematical experimentation further. What's missing is the expressive urgency and visceral communicativeness of the early work. At times the band seems intent on chasing originality through numerical solutions that are ends in themselves, at the expense of an emotional charge that ends up feeling cold and detached. They're still searching for a new song form, with Albini more melodic than ever. It works better on "Prayer To God", "Ghosts", "Song Against Itself" and "Squirrel Song", while the closing "Watch Song" is worthy of At Action Park.

Agostino is the A-side of a split 7" with Caesar (2001, Barbaraal), pressed for the Dutch market in 1200 copies together with the comic "Sex, Drugs and Strips" by Barbara Stok.

"Steady As She Goes" (live) appears on the DVD compilation "Burn To Shine 2" (2005, Trixie Dvd).

After seven long years, the new album Excellent Italian Greyhound (2007, Touch & Go) arrives almost unexpectedly. With no warning, it's suddenly in your hands, zero promotion, zero advertising, not a single video or TV appearance to speak of. And in all this time, what's changed for Shellac? Nothing. The dry, essential sound that highlights the physical space between the instruments is still the same, the floor-shattering bass, the dry drums and the cutting guitar have all stayed exactly as they were, and stylistically they've remained impervious to anything that's happened over the past seven years. It should also be said that Weston, Trainer and Albini don't live off Shellac alone: they have their own jobs, and they rehearse, record and tour whenever they have the time, money and holidays to spare. From their point of view, if you're not in a hurry, seven years isn't even an eternity.

True to tradition, the album opens with a bang: “The End Of The Radio” is a hypnotic chord progression over which Albini, as the last dj and the last man on earth, delivers the final broadcast. No living soul tuning in, no dedications, no sponsors, just the last announcement and the last record before pulling the plug. The rest of the album sticks to the band's familiar coordinates: “Kittypant” and “Paco” are two instrumentals, the former more relaxed, the latter more tense; “Steady As She Goes”, “Boycott” and “Spoke” are more driving tracks; “Be Prepared” and “Elephant” are the classic mid-tempos. A separate case is “Genuine Lullabelle”, a long track marked by several moments of silence and a spoken-word centerpiece.

In conclusion, with Excellent Italian Greyhound Shellac offer no surprises, only confirmation — and that's essentially all that's being asked of them.

Seven years later, the unexpected return. Certain moments on Dude Incredible (2014) aren't even that far removed from their most radical legacy, the elusive LP “The Futurist”, where repetitive trance reached its absolute limit. Here we're faced with yet another compendium of perfect geometries, a new forbidden dream for the obsessive-compulsive in all of us – and it's no accident that “Compliant” is about exactly that disorder. Nine tracks, half an hour of icy, tight interplay, nothing more than what we could have asked for. The band polishes up its aesthetic of nervousness and hardcore reductionism, lining up tracks that are mostly short, direct and self-explanatory (the one exception being the measured cadence of “Gary”).

It opens with a scathing title track that alone justifies all the anticipation preceding it: a masterpiece of interlocking, unison riffs, yet, oddly, one of the few episodes where the three instruments carry exactly equal weight, whereas elsewhere Weston's bass seems to get the upper hand. On “Riding Bikes” they even swap roles, with the chugging, muted guitar acting as a metronome for the bass's melodic digressions.

A curiously recurring pseudo-theme is that of surveyors: the frontman explains that many of America's founding fathers worked measuring state land to mark property boundaries, while today the term “surveyor” has taken on a far more sinister, Orwellian meaning, tied to robotic instruments programmed to monitor people from above. Elsewhere there's room for various lightning-fast invectives, reduced to scornful telegrams about vandalism, group dynamics and sexual relationships. Particularly effective is the synesthetic nod of “The People's Microphone”, a blunt, jagged instrumental referencing the “Occupy Wall Street” protests (et similia) and the concurrent invention of a human megaphone to spread messages through the crowd.

The sharp, deceptive stops – the quintessence of syncopated art – the crisp hammering of the drums, the leanness of every single passage all confirm that, 20 years after their debut, Shellac's impetuous and strenuously pointless rage hasn't diminished by an ounce. Doesn't seem like much to you? Dude, incredible.

Fifteen years after the death of the great English radio broadcaster John Peel, Shellac have not forgotten the man who was, besides a guru of independent music, a kindred spirit to Steve Albini's incorruptible artistic vision – one with his renowned on-air sessions, the other with his Touch & Go record-label forge. The archival The End Of Radio thus celebrates an era, a line of thought and action, the survival of a legacy that is more than rich — it's invaluable.

It was 1994 when the assault trio made its first appearance, fresh off the presses with At Action Park and ready to demolish the canons of the hardcore gospel. Just eleven minutes, but of total abrasion: four tracks, only one of which – “Crow”, a minimalist masterpiece in constant tension – comes from their studio debut, while the others would have to wait to be included on the later Terraform (1998) and Excellent Italian Greyhound.

From 2004, instead, comes the second live session, broadcast just months after Peel's death. A proper fifty-minute concert in front of a small in-studio audience: and it must have truly been a kind of epiphany to hear “The End Of Radio” performed live, a grotesque series of broadcast rehearsals built from three obsessive bass chords, silences and broken drum rhythms, and a voice repeating “Can you hear me now?”, as if tapping on the fourth wall of the already dying song-form. This and two other tracks are previews of the forthcoming Excellent Italian Greyhound, before the session's three decisive final blows: an extended version of the single “Billiard Player Song” and two all-time classics from their landmark debut, “Dog And Pony Show” and “Il Porno Star”. Among the thousands (!) of releases that have immortalized John Peel's work and passion, there was no way Shellac's eccentric contribution could be missing, being as they've always been champions of raw, unadorned performance, passionate and uncompromising to the bone.

In March 2024 news broke of the imminent release of Shellac's sixth album, a full ten years after Dude Incredible, but the joy was choked off by the sudden death of Steve Albini, felled by a heart attack just nine days before the chosen release date for the new record. Released on May 17, 2024, recorded across four separate sessions during four free weekends spread between November 2017 and March 2022, To All Trains displays an enviable internal coherence: it feels as if it were conceived in a single night, all in one breath, fully confirming Shellac's sonic approach — minimalist and muscular, harsh and asymmetrical, direct and unconventional. To All Trains takes on the shape of an involuntary testament, an unwitting epitaph, gaining significance not just for its actual musical content but also because it can be read as the perfect summary of an era, and of an aesthetic. The ingredients are the ones we know well: stubborn guitars insisting on the same arpeggio, obsessive rhythms engineered by Bob Weston's bass and Todd Trainer's drums, surreal, sarcastic, biting lyrics, and then those proverbial “stop & go” moments in which silences and brief pauses become just as important as the sonic thrusts. What's more, compared to other works by the trio, it has the virtue of being concise, lean, free of any needless padding, never losing itself chasing noise experimentalism for its own sake: for this reason, Shellac's final album could well become, for newcomers, the one from which to begin the journey into Steve Albini's universe.

To All Trains sounds familiar, as if we'd already heard it before, not least because it brings together under one roof some tracks that Shellac had already been playing live for a while. If the searing “WSOD” is Shellac's new, nervy noise-post-rock manifesto (the title stands for “World Series Of Dick-Sucking”, a riff on the “World Series of Poker”: Albini was an excellent poker player), the following “Girl From The Outside” is certainly no less so, and “Chick New Wave” strides decisively into the excellent opening run, even upping the bpm and building a truly impenetrable wall of sound. “Wednesday” is the darkest moment, sounding like it could have come off an old Nick Cave record, in contrast to the opening of “Scratters”, where the trio seem to be having fun tearing apart a boogie borrowed from Queens Of The Stone Age; “Days Are Dogs” could be mistaken for a Sleaford Mods track, had Sleaford Mods ever decided to use guitars instead of pre-recorded backing tracks, while “How I Wrote How I Wrote Elastic Man (cock & bull)” is instead the device used to evoke the Fall, another band that made intransigence its banner. The album closes with “I Don't Fear Hell”, Albini's final unwitting prediction, his last statement: if a hell really exists, he'll know everyone down there. Or at least, he'll know all those desolate, conflicted, suffering, brilliant souls he crossed paths with along the way, over the course of his enviable career, and who — like him — left this earth too soon.

The usual scheduled appearance at the 2024 edition of Primavera Sound in Barcelona, the festival where Shellac had been a fixed and essential presence since 2007 (the band had also announced a short UK tour to follow in early June), was replaced by a “Shellac Party” – in the same time slot that would have hosted them – during which the audience could listen to the new record and watch some archival footage. A fitting tribute, reinforced by the decision to name one of the festival's stages after Steve Albini, the very stage where Shellac had often performed in the past, which would host a program paying respect to their history. A history that was always provocatively (post-)hardcore, built without the slightest regard for the market, preserving a consistent purity and a rigorous adherence to its own principles.

Contributions by Tommaso Franci, Andrea De Pellegrin, Michele Palozzo (“Dude Incredible”, “The End Of Radio”), Claudio Lancia (“To All Trains”)

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