4 out of 5

Label: Touch & Go

Producer: Shellac

That’s cool, man.  Shellac rocks, we don’t doubt that.  Albini knows his rock and roll, shit, he knows how to cut edges (as in make it sharp), he knows how to work with the guys in his band to just make it sound like they are punching the shit out of their instruments to get this wicked thumpa-thumpa noise out of everything.  His vocals are scratchy and smarmy, spitting lines like he’s pissed that you’re listening.  From afar, it’s sort of a typical Chicago early Touch & Go sound, and it is, but it’s born of all that came before and carries that weight – you can feel that this slab of music is heavier than a lot of stuff that passed through the same playing grounds.

All that tributary stuff being said, I’ve never listened to a Shellac album that’s just felt perfect.  Albini almost seems too concerned with being just a little off-putting – musically, lyrically – to ever commit to something 100% honest, meaning you get some overly sarcastic lyrics and songs that just drop off a beat too soon because right before it’s amazing, Steve is all “eff you” and shuts the amps off.  Maybe it’s not like that at all, but that’s the feeling I always get, especially with 1000 Hurts, which opens with the flaring fuck-fuck-fuck rhythm of “Prayer to God” and then, with that out of the way, funks it up silly style for the next couple tracks.  I mean, it’s the Shellac sound, so saying “it’s too bad” doesn’t really make sense, because they’d be a different band if there wasn’t a sneer attached, but it’s, uh, too bad that Steve can’t commit to stripping away some of the snarl, because he can insert some pretty telling lyrics into “I’m gonna play dumb” titled tracks like ‘Shoe Song’ and ‘Watch Song.’  Other Shellac albums would attempt to mediate things by including some long instrumental pieces, and it’s a different approach that succeeds in its own way, but 1000 Hurts is a good show of music smarts mixed with anger, something to toss in the screamy boys faces of the nu-metal wave that would surface around the same time as this release.