"What Albini has in common with Patton, other than a certain determination to not give in to their audience, who just want to pigeonhole them and dumbly rock out (equals: have a good time for their hard-earned entertainment dollar) instead of understanding that they are important artists (though they wouldn’t make this claim explicitly. However, there is something in Shellac’s interminable thwarting of gig dynamics live/ Fantomos’s really un-groovable micro-thrash moments and long stretches of noodling that suggests a certain haughtiness, a certain custodians-of-the-tradition aloofness*) is a certain, boring Frat-boy sexism masquerading as straight-guy, warts-and-all honesty, an asanine, knee-jerk political incorrectness as a kind of self-aggrandising psuedo-reportage on the shadowy-corners of the human psyche**
Both of these tendencies intertwine on Shellac’s “ A Geniune Lullabelle” from their latest release, the predictably obtusely entitled " Excellent Italian Greyhound" which not only breaks down into silence half-way through and then spends half of it’s nine-minute running time with Albini expounding on a particular woman who “knows her way around a cock”***(not an expert poultry farmer, presumably) amid a chorus of radio presenter style voices intoning the song’s title. It’s deeply unedifying. An Italian women speaks at the end of the track and that, along with the album's title, suggests that this is Albini getting back at an ex-girlfriend, which also renders it pitiful, but not, hey, in any kind of revealingly interesting way. The whole feel of Shellac, indeed all of Albini’s post Big Black stuff is increasingly arch and dessicated, the beauty of "Songs about Fucking" and "Atomizer," apart from the propulsive disco drum patterns was the sheer range of guitar sounds, the immense Lysergic surge of "Kerosene", the irradiated intensity of their version of "The Model." While Shellac are democratic, intricate, nimble, galvanized, springy there's also something negligible, throwaway about them, something scrawny and par-boiled, that brings Albini’s self-aggrandising psuedo-reportage, and the poverty of his persona to the fore, all of which undermines the whole project fatally.
*Witness of course also "Terraforms" relentlessly dull and undynamic ten minute long, two-note thudalongs through which you could practically feel Albini smirking at your increasing dismay.
Hmm, that guy *really* hates Albini though, whereas I've got the utmost respect for him, whether or not he is a nice guy. I'd certainly disagree that it's been downhill since Big Black. As someone who mostly listened to electronic music, hip-hop etc at the time they were around, the use of drum machine on Big Black's stuff was part of the appeal, but I think it dates them now, and I haven't listened to them in ages. I'd be more likely to put the Rapeman album on- Albini siad latterly that BB should have waited and found a drummer, and hearing him matched up with the best rhythm section in that scene at the time I tended to agree.
As for the stuff about "self-aggrandising psuedo-reportage" and poverty of lyrics, well he's always been about the music really. Journos would always want him to talk endlessly about Jordan Minessota and what his message was, when he'd be trying to get across that vocals were mostly just another sound to him, which always take their chances in his mixing, never forefronted, so all this kind of misses the point. That said, part of the reason 'Lulabell' is such a drag is that he's breaking his own rules and bringing the music to a grinding halt as the words ramble on. No way is it autobiographical though, his stuff almost never is.
) that try otherwise, which can make him look like a sarcastic asshole. And taking Albini's lyrics literally and autobiographically is always wrong (except maybe the Billard Player Song).