NEW ALBUMS

To All Trains TOUCH AND GO 8/10

The thoughtful but reliably savage last bow of Steve Albini and co.

By John Robinson

Shellacin 2022:(l–r) SteveAlbini, ToddTrainer, Bob Weston

DANIELBERGERON

EVEN beyond Steve Albini’s recent passing, the sixth Shellac album is a recording touched by mortality. On one song, “Tattoos”, he mutters threateningly about raising a vigilante army of ghosts, and describes time as waiting like a hunter, primed for the kill. The album ends with “I Don’t Fear Hell”, in which Albini opines wryly on the devil’s lair and sings of a joyful “leap into my grave”. Another key song is “Wednesday”, in which a broken man’s life story is concisely assessed. At the end we learn he recently shot himself in his kitchen.

At 27 minutes in length, with its savage guitar attack and early mention of “urine, blood and hair”, you might assume Shellac were on-side with Thomas Hobbes’ take on life as nasty, brutish and short. Really, though, that would miss the point of a band who were warm and playful at heart, albeit wrapped in a spiky and satirical exterior. A group with a big reputation, operating outside the traditional record business, Shellac had no expectations on them and so were able to do what they wanted – at least as far as their day jobs allowed them.

Their creative freedom is evident again on their final album, where their abrasive and disciplined brand of rock covers a beat ranging from elliptical storytelling through to character studies and the kind of comments on contemporary music mores that you might have once expected from The Fall or LCD Soundsystem. Albini talked about “extending the universe” of a band, and this often manifested itself in delightful and unorthodox behaviour, a playful dismantling of the rock band paradigm. Live, Shellac often conducted a question-and-answer session, and during their song “Wingwalker” pretended to be aeroplanes. They considered playing catch on stage.