4 out of 5

Recorded by: Steve Albini

Label: Gasoline Boost Records

A hot slab of proto no-wave rawk, delivered with recognizable rasp by vocalist Al Johnson, Mark Shippy’s muscular riffing, and a bass and drum gutpunch produced / mixed to mass terrorizing effect by Steve Albini.  This was the early 90s, and it’s currently 2017, and this thing still sounds vicious, is still a uniquely cut and dry and yet dense experience – the thing rips you apart with a simple guitar / bass / drums / snark formula – and is still Shorty and none other.  Landmark Skin Grafters and other Chicago acts of the era have their inheritors littered o’er the musical landscape, but the Al / Mark brain trust, here expressed as maddened rock destroyers, and later in U.S. Maple as insane time and tone manipulators, have no clear peers or on-their-par followers, then or now.  There’s a legacy, for sure, but my point is: you will always know Shorty.

And Thumb Days, their debut disc, featuring the hyped-for-good-reason ear-shredding singles Niggerhat and Last One in my Mouth is a Jerk, establishes that supremacy from the first busy flurry of opener Skirts and Heels.  What the hell is Johnson howling about?  How is Coopie and Me almost a pop song, if pop were the product of excitable asylum escapees?

Uh huh.  No idea.

Thumb Days, admittedly, gets a little lost in its own hurry to be insane: the comparatively stripped down riff of Rocketman, Rocketman is but a brief respite from the noise, which leaves the ears a bit fuzzy for the catchy stomp of closer Red Bull, but once you’ve been through the album enough times to get a feel for its lack of flow (it just sorta happens all at once), you come to crave that very specific rush only this album – and Shorty – provides.