it’s been a while since i listened to the 80’s/90s touch and go stuff and i can’t remember what exactly triggered this recent surge of anti-social dude rock in my daily rotation. it’s absurd how much shellac, jesus lizard and big black i’ve listened to the past two days. honestly a lot of times these songs are as funny to me even though they come off as violently aggro and macho. when i saw shellac last year, the audience was 80% sausage as i had expected. steve albini and bob weston cracked amusing dry jokes about hamburgers and bad haircuts between assaultive songs with scraping metallic guitar sounds and bonham-like thunderous drums. it was so loud and painful that i came back the next night. i loved it. i know it’s bad for me in the tinnitus department, but i can’t help it.

anyway i heard recently that shellac is going to release a new album in june and I’m excited because it’s been 7 years since the last record. i can leave this stuff alone for awhile and indulge in the airy and melodic but when i come back to it it always sticks in the rotation for awhile bordering on obsession. the content may come off really depraved and offensive, but i think a lot of people who hate albini’s discography don’t pick up on his sense of humor. to me he is like this hedonistic & volatile rick moranis with misanthropic urges to boot. him growling about thousands of “real” squirrels in a manner that suggests the armageddon is imminent is just hysterical imagery to me. it makes sense to me if/why people don’t feel it, but i don’t take his fearless trash talking in interviews or his lyrics seriously to a point I’m offended. what i love is the threatening intensity in his voice, even when he sings about woodland creatures or ballerinas. that intensity is always there even when he is completely tongue-in-cheek and i appreciate it. to me people who can crack tongue-in-cheek jokes & sarcasm and never let up are deserving of appreciation. it is kind of an artform.