And so do Hole in one freaks Pulled Apart By Horses…This video was shot in one day at the Leeds Golf Centre and they were nice enough to give us a huge box of balls and let us swing like apes. We even managed to hit the little dude that goes collecting the balls in his ball collecting buggy. He was sweet.
Ok, so it’s been a while since we’ve made a post. Things have happened and we are not this machine that keeps on going on when shit gets bad, we need a time out. I’m not saying things are better but its time to get a move on and sort things out. First thing is the latest issue is out, in the bars, shops, etc. It has Dinosaur Jr in it and Pissed Jeans, plus some bands you may not have heard off like The Jadewalkers or Buke And Gass. We are also working on a special ATP issue which should tie in well with their 10 year anniversary and is why we have dregged up this old Shellac Interview for you’re reading pleasure as they are goddam residence. Enjoy and enjoy…
Shellac/ Shut Magazine Interview August 2007
There are a million bands that claim to be ‘punk’ and will mouth off about it whilst happily sitting on their major label payroll; then there are bands who prefer to stay under the radar, bands who see no relation between music and money. Shellac are one of those rare bands who do everything the way it should be done, and they don’t mouth off about it at all because, well, it’s just the way it should be done. Musically their approach is equally unconventional; you can draw comparisons with the arty DC hardcore of Fugazi and the more unhinged direction of The Jesus Lizard but (without trying to sound obvious) they really do sound like themselves. They can be stupidly complex or nastily simple, always utterly abrasive and never without a heavy dose of sarcasm. A friend of mine put it best I think, “They’re the heaviest a band can be without being metal”. Guitarist/vocalist Steve Albini doesn’t help much with descriptions; his reply to my question “where does the new album sit in relation to other Shellac albums?” is quite simple. “Oh, it’s just like all our other records” he says. Yeah, thanks. Since forming in 1992, Shellac have released 4 albums and numerous seven inches and EPs, all on independent labels. They have shunned all the music industry bullshit that bands so easily fall into – Shellac don’t do music videos, they don’t demand a set fee when they play and they don’t have extensive press schedules, in fact when I first emailed bassist Bob Weston to ask if they were doing any interviews while they were in the UK he simply said “We don’t care one way or the other. But if you are interested, we’re happy to do it”. This sums them up really, people who distance themselves from the conventional music business routine without alienating people who are genuinely interested in the band.
Shellac don’t even tour to promote a record; “Most of our touring is just when we feel like going some place and we can use the band as an excuse to go there” says Albini, “or people have been sort of badgering us about playing in their part of the world so we’ll try to organise a trip where we can do it and have it be financially viable. So, we end up sort of de facto having a tour put together without actually having any rationale for touring other than we just feel like going out and playing some shows.” The reason Shellac are in town this time is for the All Tomorrow Parties festival, an event that the notoriously picky 3-piece are happy to be involved in whenever their presence is requested. Albini explains the bands affinity with the festival, “During the 80’s and 90’s we sort of developed, individually and as Shellac, a distaste for festivals just because they’re kind of an unpleasant experience for everybody. When Barry (Hogan, ATP founder) started doing ATP it sort of began a new era of more civilised festivals and when we were originally approached about playing ATP we just said “we don’t play festivals cos they suck” and we got talked into it and it turned out that All Tomorrows Parties was actually a pretty great experience. So, to show our appreciation for him developing a new paradigm of how festivals can be run, almost anything that Barry asks us to do, we’ll do”. It’s the sad truth that in the mainstream media, Shellac, and Albini in particular, are probably most famous for the fact that he produced Nirvana’s last album, ‘In Utero’. I know that I first became aware of Shellac through this connection but for some reason it was years before I actually listened to them. Albini has also produced albums by bands as diverse as The Jesus Lizard, Bush, Neurosis, Zao and even quirky singer/songwriter Joanna Newsom. I’m intrigued to know what he thinks of Miss Newsom? “She’s super smart, I really like her voice and she’s a super bad ass on that harp. She really tears ass on that thing, there are very few people who can take a completely feeble instrument like the harp and make it kick ass and she can totally make it kick ass” the man replies.
“Most of our touring is just when we feel like going some place and we can use the band as an excuse to go there”
One thing that Shellac have never been is prolific. As far as releases go, they always have a reasonable gap between albums (it’s been seven years between ‘1000 hurts’ and the new album, ‘Excellent Italian greyhound’) and live shows are sparse, they have a fair reason for this though. Sometimes life just has to get in the way. “All of us have demanding schedules so that doesn’t leave a lot of time for the band and so we are thinking about the band all the time and we’re all sort of trying to schedule times to do things with the band but everything ends up dragging on because it’s a low priority for all of us. So, we’ll have some rehearsal scheduled and then something will come up and we’ll have to blow off the rehearsal so that somebody can earn some money or go to a wedding or whatever the fuck it is and before you know it you know, years go by. It’s not like we said “you know lets not work on the band for a while” it just takes us forever to get anything done”. So where does Shellac fit into your lives as a whole, as a ‘low priority’? “We don’t think of the band as a vehicle to play songs for people and make records and shit like that, it’s a life experience for us. It’s what we’re doing as a creative outlet and it’s what we’re doing as a way of living within the relationship between the three of us. As it turns out, along the way, every now and again, we make a record.”
By Lee Vincent.
