Artist: Shellac (of North America)
Label: Touch and Go Records
Released: 2007
Length: 42:19
Rating: 4.9/5
Which band could possibly put an Italian greyhound on an album cover, ringed by fruit and veg, with a front that looks like its back and a back that looks like its front? Shellac, obviously. The dog on the cover is Uffizi, drummer Todd Trainer’s dog. Uffizi is kind of the band’s mascot, he turns up at rehearsals and recording sessions, and Todd swears he absolutely loves their music. That doesn’t tell you much about the album, but it’s definitely the kind of anecdote that gives a band its very own identity. And if any band is one of a kind, it’s Shellac.
Of course, a regal cover like that competes with the music. Shellac had to somehow counter Uffizi’s image, and in doing so they may have made the best album of their career – though I’d sooner say that all their albums are the best albums of their career. On one hand, Exellent Italian Greyhound contains everything the name Shellac stood for in the ’90s (and of course keeps standing for to this day), all of Steve Albini’s convictions; on the other, it feels incredibly sophisticated, which may even be a first on a Shellac record. That sophistication is of course an elusive quality with Shellac, especially when Albini brings up cocks (»Genuine Lulabelle«), when he dedicates songs to individual girls like the last man and DJ on earth (»The End of Radio«), and when he simply babbles on in eccentric fashion (which isn’t exactly Albini’s trademark, but reflects the whole zeitgeist of the ’80s and ’90s indie scene), but you can undoubtedly feel it in Albini’s guitar sound, in the way the rhythm section and guitar are woven together, in the blurring of the musicians’ roles, of genres, and of how seriously the band takes its own message.
Exellent Italian Greyhound is, in a very special way, a monument to all the bands Steve Albini has played in. Of course I’m not saying Steve isn’t evolving musically, even though at 50 he still looks like the (stereo)typical scatterbrained, slightly disheveled student in oversized glasses (without giving off a shred of hipster vibe, which is hard to pull off these days), but the record builds precisely on everything that’s great about Shellac, and before them Rapeman and Big Black. Against all odds, Steve Albini still keeps perfecting his trademark robotic-metallic guitar sound, Weston is again dreaming up the most impossible and varied combinations of bass notes (though just once he has to oblige the bassist cliché, so the poor guy plays the same three notes nonstop through the whole of »The End of Radio«, which runs a good 8 minutes, and over 10 live), and Trainer is, as usual, wonderfully off the wall for the whole album. The lyrics are a mix of brilliant contemporary poetry, social critique and clever metaphors with uncontrolled screams and goofy phrases, and overall it’s a witty, candid tribute to punk rock and, with it, to Albini’s indie spirit.
Still, that isn’t the core of the record, that something extra, the thing that’s more than just homage, if you took what I wrote that way. This is, after all, music that, through mathy progressive structures, still offers intelligent, simple, and intelligently simple solutions – a union of an unbridled punk rock attitude and a DIY approach that gives you the feeling everything was nailed on the first take, with truly progressive, seriously thought-out structures, sonic nuances, accents, transitions, counterpoints, atonality, dissonance, and so on. Shellac don’t lean on past ideas but keep hunting for new solutions, new sounds, so it’s always something new, something fresh, something not yet heard and therefore interesting. Even if you don’t like the music, you can’t claim you’ve heard anything like it before – except maybe through the legacy of the aforementioned (Albini) outfits. But none of them was ever as polished, as expansive and as all-encompassing as Shellac’s Exellent Italian Greyhound.
So what is Excellent Italian Greyhound, then? Certainly a pretty specific record for a pretty specific audience. It’s not punk rock. It’s not math rock. It’s not noise rock. It’s not a joke and it’s not serious. Seriously, what even is Excellent Italian Greyhound? What the fuck does this Italian greyhound ringed by fruit and veg stand for? Everything that’s essential, elemental and, ultimately, good in art, while also embodying a very particular zeitgeist, philosophy, mindset and ingenuity? Or, as Albini often modestly puts it, just ordinary music made by an ordinary band? We can answer both with yes and no. So before you actually listen to it, Excellent Italian Greyhound is just Shrödinger’s dog, but by listening it can become – everything.
Line-up
Steve Albini – guitar, vocals
Bob Weston – bass guitar, vocals
Todd Trainer – drums
Production
Steve Albini
Track list
1 The End of Radio
2 Steady As She Goes
3 Be Prepared
4 Elephant
5 Genuine Lulabelle
6 Kittypants
7 Boycott
8 Paco
9 Spoke
