3 out of 5

Produced by: Shellac

Label: Touch and Go

They wait seven years, and then they drop a complete ode to themselves: the essence of undercutting.  From the start, Shellac has always seemed a bit off the cuff, and grinning at you whilst offering a hot cup o’ spleen.  Amazing riffs and cutting lyrics dodge into shambling asides and jokes; a run of solid tracks gets destroyed by indulgences.  In general, for every moment that’s your favorite, Steve Albini and crew will chortle and do something completely against the grain, maybe and only just ’cause, and then let’s end the track here why not.  And Excellent Italian Greyhound is, like, years worth of that mentality pent up and released.  Which means, at times, that you get songs that align with their classics – opener The End of Radio is as direct and propulsive as the band gets – and then some cuts that are the band at their outright slickest, like the all-too-brief instrumental Boycott.  The flipside of that is the repetitive and underwhelming stop/start nature of Elephant, and the wasteful Genuine Lullabelle, which has us listening to Steve’s atonal speak-sing for like 8 minutes before some guitar riffs finally kick in.  The group atones with some short cuts thereafter, including the well-developed Paco and the blast of closer Spoke, but man is that middle section of the album almost a death knell.  The remaining two songs, after Radio, are solid if standard Shellac-ers, which means you’re really dealing with the far ends of the album as the sole highlights.  A three star rating was difficult, my ears getting slammed against that Lullably brick wall in the album’s middle.  But I remind myself: This is part of what Shellac does.  It’s almost like they dare you to enjoy their albums despite their flaws, getting goofier with the lyrics or more anarchic with the compositions the closer they get to creating a successive string of good songs.  And Excellent Italian Greyhound is quite a dare, which could seem prefigured by the lead track’s proclamations.  Followup ‘Steady As She Goes’ could then be seen to have a similarly self-explanatory title – and indeed sounds “like Shellac,” with its unshowy, jammy Albini strum and and break-apart / come-together drumming and bass.  This “message” – and jesus christ bless how self-referential and quotey this whole experience / review is turning out – could culminate in track 3’s ‘Be Prepared,’ which starts to bring in the ol’ Shellac humor (e.g. “I was born bald… be prepared”) and, meanwhile, is probably the rawest experience on the disc, starting off with the group seemingly getting their shit together before the song is just magically born.  The “Elephant” in the room is underwhelming, and who knows what a genuine lullabelle is (I mean, you probably do, but I don’t).  That the album ends with some rattled off but satisfyingly cohesive instrumentals is the come down from the experience, after the group has played their joke and they’re trying to tell you it’s okay.  Then slam you over the head with Spoke.

I just reviewed the album twice in one review, basically.  Fuck Shellac.  (But, uh, keep making music please.)