Shellac - Excellent Italian Greyhound

Genre rock Publisher Touch & Go External Links Official Touch & Go Records Website

Say what you will about Shellac, but don't you dare refuse the trio their due as compositional, sequencing stuntmen. Vocalist/guitarist Steve Albini, bassist/singer Bob Weston, and drummer Todd Trainer regularly open albums with an explosively obnoxious statement: consider, if you will, the yanked-riff affrontery of "My Black Ass" (1994's At Action Park); "Prayer to God," a venomous rant where God was urged to off an ex and her lover, specifically to make the man "cry like a woman, no particular woman" (1998's Terraform); or sloooooooooow-motion baking-soda volcano "Didn't We Deserve A Look At You The Way You Really Are" (2000's 1,000 Hurts). Excellent Italian Greyhound, the first Shellac album in a shattered mirror's curse, ups the ante by putting a stunt out front and planting one at the midway point. Opener "The End of Radio" is seven chunky minutes of seismic shifts and tragicomedic AM/FM fatalism, while "Genuine Lulabelle" squashes together romance, porn fantasies, and the voice of movie-trailer demigod Ken Nordine into, well, something else. Greyhound can't hold a candle to Action Park's blasting, spiky, Wire-derivative glories, but it at least breaks new ground and ranks just north of the pretty durn good Terraform and effectively apologizes for the disposable Hurts. The stunt tracks overshadow the just-okay instrumentals as the strained groans of Albini and Weston's guitar strings whump and ring over Trainer's clear, concussive drumming and the blunt snap of sarcastic and/or uber-macho lyrical assertions: the Shellac engine humming along abrasively, as well it should by this point. I didn't mention "Spoke," did I? Well, it's their weirdest song - er, stunt - yet. A snatch of twee Free Design/New Pornographers power-poppish harmonizing! An ounce of monotone, amp-bludgeoing Stereolab-ish slugging! Then Shellac go all faux hardcore punk with Albini and Weston screaming meaningless inanities at one another with more conviction than they've ever bothered to muster before. It's a jarring, funny album closer, but not "let's encase our new album in a Dick's Picks box" funny - which is a large part of why 2007 marks the first time since junior year of college that I'm proud to call these guys one of my favorite bands again.