If there's a hell
I'm gonna know everyone
(from “I Don't Fear Hell”)
When the news of the imminent release of Shellac's sixth album was spread a couple of months ago, ten years after the previous “Dude Incredible”, there was a certain surprise among fans and admirers, who almost no longer had any hope of being able to listen to unreleased music from the American trio. A joy that lasted the space of a few weeks, strangled by the sudden death of Steve Albini, struck down by a heart attack just nine days before the date chosen to release the new work. An absolutely central personality in the dense succession of events that have shaped the alt-rock scene of recent decades, and not only for what he achieved as a musician (in addition to Shellac, his militancy in Big Black and Rapeman should not be forgotten) but even more for his work behind the console during the recording of hundreds of records that have filled our lives.
The studios he founded in Chicago in 1997, Electrical Audio, were (and continue to be) an indispensable point of reference in the development of a sound that has set a precedent and generated proselytism. Position the microphones in a certain way, eliminate any reverberation, exploit the intrusion of situations generating unexpected chaos, record strictly in analogue, all together live, to capture the true essence, the spontaneity of the performance, avoiding any overdubbing: These are just some of the cornerstones that have characterized Albini's unshakeable ideology.
The solidity of Shellac's records functioned as a vehicle for his own beliefs, an example to follow, a catalog to browse through, and the list of musicians who shared his attitude, choosing to be produced by him, is very long (on the website Electrical Audio official there are the required fees, it didn't even cost a lot, and if you were lucky enough to live in the area…). Whoever chose him did so because he aspired to have exactly that sound, he wanted to be recorded in exactly that way, he wanted his record to sound exactly like that. Almost non-existent promotion and irreverent interviews were other fundamental characteristics in Albini's way of acting, never tender with artists who were willing to compromise, including those (yes, even Sonic Youth) who in the past he had certainly esteemed .
Published for historical purposes label Touch & Go, which returns to mark new material after several years, recorded in four different sessions, during four free weekends spread between November 2017 and March 2022, “To All Trains” demonstrates an enviable internal coherence: it seems to have been conceived in a single night, all in one breath, confirming in full Shellac's sonic approach, minimalist and muscular, hard and asymmetrical, direct and unconventional. Listened to now, “To All Trains” takes on the appearance of an involuntary testament, an unconscious epitaph, and the fact that Steve is no longer with us increases the attention towards a record that otherwise would have risked passing under the radar, perhaps hastily judged as “the usual Shellac album”. And instead now it acquires relevance, not only for the real musical contents, but also because it can be read as the perfect summary of an era, and of an aesthetic.
The ingredients are those we know well: obstinate guitars that insist on the same arpeggio, obsessive rhythms architected by Bob Weston's bass and Todd Trainer's drums, surreal, sarcastic, biting lyrics, and then those proverbial “stop & go” in which the silences, short pauses become as important as sonic lunges. Furthermore, compared to the trio's other works, it has the advantage of being concise, streamlined, without any unnecessary prolixity, without getting lost in the search for noise experimentalism as an end in itself: for this reason Shellac's latest album could become, for neophytes, the one from which to embark on the journey to discover Steve Albini's universe.
“To All Trains” sounds familiar, as if we had already heard it, also because it brings together under the same roof some tracks that Shellac had been performing live for some time. If the burning “WSOD” is Shellac's new nervous noise-post-rock manifesto (the title stands for “World Series Of Dick-Sucking”, a paraphrase of the “World Series Of Poker”: Albini was an excellent player), the subsequent “Girl From The Outside” is certainly no exception, and “Chick New Wave” enters decisively into the excellent initial sequence, even increasing the Bpm and creating a wall of sound truly impassable. “Wednesday” is the darkest moment, it seems like it came out of an old Nick Cave record, unlikeincipit of “Scratters”, in which the three seem to want to have fun by tearing up a boogie borrowed from Queens Of The Stone Age; “Days Are Dogs” could be mistaken for a piece by Sleaford Mods, if the latter had ever decided to use guitars instead of pre-recorded backing tracks, “How I Wrote How I Wrote Elastic Man (Cock & Bull)” instead represents the ploy to remember the Fall, another band that made intransigence its banner.
The album ends with “I Don't Fear Hell”, Albini's last involuntary prediction, the last declaration: if hell really exists, he will know everyone in there. Or at least he will know all those desolate, conflicted, suffering, brilliant souls that he has encountered during his journey, during his enviable career, and who – like him – have abandoned this earth too soon.
We are left with the absence. The usual appearance scheduled for the Primavera Sound in Barcelona, the Festival where Shellac had been a permanent and indispensable presence since 2007 (the band had also announced a short tour in England to follow at the beginning of June), will be replaced by a “Shellac Party” – in the same time slot that would have hosted them – during which the public will be able to listen to the new album and review some archive images. A due celebration, strengthened by the choice to name a stage of this edition of the Festival after Steve Albini, the stage where Shellac had often performed in the past, and which this year will host a program that respects their history. A story that is always provocatively (post) hardcore, built without giving a damn about the market, preserving a coherent purity and rigorous adherence to its own principles.
05/19/2024
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
