Shellac 'To All Trains' album review

Shellac

To All Trains

(Touch and Go)

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Of course, the death of Steve Albini at the age of 61 May overshadows this album and brings a finality that was not intended for this release. As ever, Shellac was a work in progress, a snapshot of an occasional project of one of those perfect rock triangles – a three-piece of perfection where those open-ended constructions of music in post-punk where everyone plays lead are taken to their logical conclusion. To All Trains was another peep into the tight world of the band and another celebration of their minimalistic genius over 10 songs and 28 minutes.

If always that that Shellac were somehow eternal and existed in their own time continuum, which has now sadly ended. ‘To All Trains’ may be their first album for ten years but carries on from where they left off a decade ago. Fashions and fads come and go, and yet there they were like a lump of granite to remind us of the possibilities of ‘alt culture’.  

Like all the greatest bands, Shellac explored each member’s capabilities in sound with their ad hoc musical relationship, which picks on and off when each member found time from their own lives to create. 

In a time when alternative music has become commodified into a lifestyle choice or a chummy radio playlist for grinning DJs to nod along to (or as Albini himself sings at one point on the album ‘I’m through with music from ‘dudes’!), or a slightly faded T-shirt choice, Shellac somehow remained beyond the horizon. A marker for the possibilities of making music on your own terms. To All Trains is, of course, as awkward and compellingly brilliant as any of their releases. A missive of possibility from the dark underground and thrilling imagination of its players. 

The beauty of Shellac is in their intuitive playing, creating a music of such drama and tension and complexity that it somehow makes a logical sense. All those years we laboured in the Death To Trad rock wars have been wiped off the planet as Shellac took those primitive fumblings into a sonic perfection. It’s like all those recording methods of Steve Albini were almost created to record his own damn band – the use of space, the ambience of the room is being played here with as much as any of the instruments and never has a guitar, bass or drums ever sounded better. The myth about Albini, among many, was that he was a noise merchant, but the opposite is true. There is so much clarity to his recordings, so much space in the sound, each instrument is beautifully recorded and resides in its own space, glorious in its own sonic perfection.

Despite their ongoing lack of interest in any kind of suffocating rock convention Shellac rock pretty damn hard and even nod to their teenage passions of Led Zep Bonzo grooves and ZZ Top cactus riffola yet they have somehow contrived to make music that is both beyond any kind of pale and is also innately catchy and and toys with the perfect groove. 

Todd Trainer is a remarkable drummer and somehow swings whilst deconstructing the beat beast. Some of his drum rolls are breathtaking as they collapse across the song, yet always finding the perfect moment to kick that groove again. 

When you hear Todd lock back in you can visualise all those heads at a Shellac gig nodding in perfect unison. 

He’s also always a melodic drummer who takes his kit out for a walk at the top of the song for a break before slipping back into the machine. The grinding bass from Bob Weston is the other key component switching rolls from holding down its own groove with a perfect sound that is a scientific alchemy of bass science to get the perfect grinding chirping sound that sometimes leads the song and sometimes sits equal in the mix to Albini’s jagged guitar shapes. This is a restless guitar that switches from twanging atmospheres to shrapnel skree but only when needed.

Hell, it’s even catchy!

No one in Shellac overplays every note is valued, and with none of that, the fidgety overplaying that ruins most rock music is never indulged in.

The resulting seething experimentalism and jagged landscapes are perfect for the as ever off kilter subject matter that grapples with diverse subject matter like on the album closing piece, I Don’t Fear Hell, which ironically sees Steve Albini dealing with death with a typically dark humour that now has a tragic added resonance with its darkly funny lines like “And when this is over, I’ll leap in my grave like the arms of a lover. If there’s a heaven, I hope they’re having fun, ‘cos if there’s a hell I’m gonna know everyone!”.  Or the even pithier ‘I don’t fear hell, their baseball team is undefeated‘ ha ha ha – that one was funny. The song has that kind of dynamic tension and release of classic Shellac album end pieces like The End Of Radio that underpins the trio’s perfect sonic synchronicity.

With his journalistic background and brilliantly twisted lyrical imagination, Albini was always great with the wry observations that are tip of the iceberg snapshots of Americana with an added dark humour and observational dark humour like on Scabby The Rat that sounds like a seismic neo-disco shuffle doing kung fu of da Floyd’s Lucifer Sam whilst singing about the huge inflatable rodent symbol of trade union resistance in Chicago. It kinda of makes its point with its dry humour and keen observation.  The perfect grinding almost Fall groove of How I Wrote How I Wrote Elastic Man (cock & bull) almost has a gentle melody as Albini, perhaps, nods to another awkward icon of the underground Mark E Smith.

Yet another brilliant missive from a trio whose musical journey was a remarkable trip into their own private club of off-kilter jokes, observations and musical ideas. To The Trains captures those few rare moments of time when their kinetic chemistry and dark magic were perfectly captured by Albini’s studio wizardry. It was never intended as an end piece or a pointer to a future but as a snapshot of a genius musical combination and sounds as thrilling and fresh as anything they have ever done. 

Shellac ‘To All Trains’ album review

Shellac ‘To All Trains’ album review

Shellac ‘To All Trains’ album review