Excellent Italian Greyhound

Excellent Italian Greyound

Shellac

 

            Shellac of North America have an incredibly dedicated following (of which I am a member) who will travel great distances to see a rare live show.  Steve Albini, Bob Weston, and Todd Trainer produced three albums of unique, forceful material from 1992 to 2000.  Their first album in seven years, 2007’s Excellent Italian Greyhound, consists mainly of songs that they’ve been playing live for most of that gap; so, to the initiate, there is an easy familiarity with many of these songs.  But ultimately, the album fails to satisfy despite some excellent moments.  They keep building momentum, and then willfully obfuscating it, which becomes frustrating and boring after a while.  Actually, most of the problems with this album can be pinned on one track, “Genuine Lulabelle, “ the fifth track on a nine-track album.  The first four tracks build themselves up, and then all life gets sucked from the album in a nine-minute festival of boredom.  The last four tracks, while entertaining on their own, can’t quite get the interest back, and the album falls flat.

As always with a Steve Albini project, the recording is impeccable.  The drums, in particular, sound perfectly life-like, especially at high volume – you feel like you’re in the room with Todd Trainer.  The first track, “The End of Radio,” is a post-apocalyptic tale of the last ever radio broadcast shouted over drums and a repetitive bass line that is both funny and philosophical.  This song, like the album, builds momentum during the portions when Steve plays guitar, but then willfully undercuts it.  On this track, the tactic is effective.  Steve takes the basic premise into some interesting philosophical space, asking the semiotic question, “Is it really broadcasting if there’s no one there to receive?”  He repeatedly asks, “Can you hear me now?” and you feel the desperation of any artist, or anyone at all, who wants to be heard.  Add to that some beautifully biting trebles and great sound, and you barely notice the 8:26 you spend on this one.

The next two tracks, “Steady as She Goes” and “Be Prepared,” are probably the most straightforward rock songs on the album.  Again, there’s a bedrock bass line from Bob Weston, with Steve ranging over the top on guitar.  There’s a 35 second breakdown at 1:40 that builds some anticipation.  Then, they deliver the goods at with a wide-open rendering of the main riff.  “Be Prepared” does something similar, and the shuffle that begins at 2:25 is probably the most satisfying 35 seconds on the album.  Like “End of Radio” and three other songs on the album, “Be Prepared” stops with a held note, followed by two quick eight notes – “Bum-Bump” – that at first listen seems funny, but then just seems unimaginative.  But still, to this point, the album has been moving in a positive direction.  Track four, Bob’s song “Elephant,” moves along slowly at first.  Bob’s political lyrics are pretty obvious, and during the second verse, Steve mumbles some oddities under Bob’s vocal that don’t really add anything.  But the post-breakdown riff brings both the song and album new life and all seems right with the world.

After the first four mostly-successful tracks, the album seems ready to roll along.  Unfortunately, this momentum is short-lived.  “Genuine Lulabelle” has so many negative points that it’s hard to know where to begin.  There are several minutes of aimless guitar vamping, self-consciously shocking lyrics about a party girl, and guest vocalists reading the words a cappella.  It is incredibly, painfully uninteresting, for all its profanity and blatant sexuality.  It’s not until 7:12 that anything cool happens.  For a minute and ten seconds, there’s music – big, bold, beautiful rock and roll.  But in the end, it’s too little, too late.

The rest of the album has its moments, but it feels like an afterthought.  “Kittypants,” which follows the “Lulabelle” train wreck, is an honest to goodness pretty Shellac song.  “Boycott” pretty well demonstrates their Minutemen fan-boy status, with Bob singing eerily like D. Boon.  “Paco” has at least three great guitar riffs.  “Spoke” is a hysterical take on screamy music, with Bob and Steve shouting nonsensical, unintelligible lyrics.  And while each of these songs on its own is entertaining in the highest degree, they are not enough together to climb out from underneath the ponderous boredom brought on by “Genuine Lulabelle.”

 

+3 [w/o track 5, +7]

Real Emotional Trash

Real Emotional Trash

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks

 

            Stephen Malkmus, king of the slacker-rock giants of the ‘90s, has come a long way from Brighten the Corners, only to end up awfully close to where he started.  Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing.  The first post-Pavement album went in a different direction, with carefully crafted pop songs and absurd lyrics.  Pig Lib established a new/old sound, with extended jams and snippets of weird and sometimes profound vocals.  Here we are again with Real Emotional Trash.  But he does it so well that you’re glad your back.

            The guitar tones on this record are brilliant, opening with a tight, nasal fuzz in duel guitar bluesy sweeps.  The opening track, “Dragonfly Pie,” clearly demonstrated this album’s MO: big guitar parts with dark verses cut with bright, poppy choruses.  Then, of course, there’s the 11/4 time signature for much of “Dragonfly,” and the really interesting use of keyboards, and you have a microcosm of the album as a whole.

            The whole album has a nice live sound quality.  “Hopscotch Willie” builds its jam up to a mountainous crescendo, and then pulls it immediately down to just the drums at five minutes in.  You can practically hear the crowd cheering for their guitar hero (not the video game).  When the vocals come back in, you can hear the pops and puffs in the mic.  This is good stuff.  The leys here sound eerily like The Chronic, only over a bassanova pop song.  But Malkmus pulls off this blend of 60s pop drum and bass with 90s rap keys and rolls it into an extendo-stoner-jam with a pretty slide solo, and it works.

            The absurd lyrics of Pavement are definitely here, but they give way to some clear statements this time.  On “We Can’t Help You,” near the end of the album, Mr. Malkmus sings that, “There’s no common goal/There’s no moral action…There’s no sky above/For you to cry into.”   The song is truly a self help anthem.  That seems to be the philosophy of the album: live for yourself, and help yourself.

            However, Steve et al definitely wander off the mark from time to time.  Those Chronic sounding keyboards sometimes shift to a 70s Styx sound., as on “Elmo Delmo.”  Then, of course, there’s the ridiculous call-and-answer bit in “Baltimore” with the Trans-Siberian guitar tone.  It’s just unnecessary.  Then there’s the consistent “fall-apart” ending.  It happens at least four times on a ten track album.  And of course, the gratuitous lengths of some of these songs get in the way of a casual listen.  However, the skill of Steve’s guitar work and the inventiveness of the jams saves the album from wandering into Moe territory – a dark place indeed. 

            The title track, a 10:09 multi-directional jam, shows the range of this band.  The song itself – the actual melody, lyrics, verses and chorus – is more or less boring.  But, the guitar work is consistently inventive, leading to a instrumental jam.  But this jam, like all the others on the album, is obviously planned.  The guitars play in unison or intricate harmony with such frequency that at the very least they’ve been shaped.  But they sound sloppy and improvised, which is a neat trick.  This particular jam takes a turn at around 5:10.  There, it starts a “Free Bird” style accelerando that takes over a minute, then opens into a faster, traditional rock n’ roll, infinitely more exciting song articulated by some really intense guitar blurbs (perhaps a tremelo with adjustable speed?).  And Malkmus gives us probably the most honest line of lyric on the record, “It’s the old fruit that makes wine.”  He’s certainly older than your average indie rocker, but he’s still crankin’ out the wine.

            In “Cold Son,” Steve sings that he feels, “like a nympho stuck in a cloister.”  I feel quite certain that he just liked the way that phrase sounded.  But perhaps he has been just that: a guitar wanky jammer stuck in indie rock playing Fall style parodies.  If so, then he’s definitely come out into the rest of the world.  But, then again, “Poor is the man who would sully my youth.”  Malkmus blends that old indie apathy with some real guitar skill and hidden hard work.

 

+6