Records: Shellac's Terraform

By Peter Jaros

Yeah! I hear this one leads off with a suspenseful rock epic! Space age!

But awful slow for the space age, no? Its been four years since the last album!

What is this, a new Boston record?

No, Shellac! Shellac, Chicago's premier precision trio, has launched us past rock, past post-rock, into meta-rock. And no wonder: Shellac's members--a very famous recording engineer with a long punk rock resumé, a semi-famous recording engineer with a slightly shorter resumé, and a warehouse manager with a fair-length resumé--have their eyes open.

Punctuated by bursts of stridency, their mechanistic, sometimes hypnotic minimalism, isn't quite sure how seriously to take itself in 1998 (never mind that this album was recorded in '95 and '96). Given the album's title and back cover art--a too-perfect landscape photo, with royal blue sky and spot-lacquered water--the whole affair shouts not rock but rockaform.

And it convinces nevertheless. Irony is not much fun unless it accompanies seductive, non-ironic pleasure. The trio's sonic economy, condensed through higher-than-high-fi analog recording, touches all the right nerves. The Bob Weston-Todd Trainer rhythm section, accented by Steve Albini's restrained guitar, is almost as accurate as the laws ofphysics. It includes 30-second anticipations ("Disgrace") and rhythms that are simultaneously straight and swung ("Didn't We Deserve a Look at You the Way You Really Are"). Albini's lyrics keep the whole thing perched on the edge--cowardice, eccentricity, and...elements! (From "Copper": "Plated or anodized, you even fool the layman's eyes.... Copper, don't ever be gold.")

Athough it isn't as consistent as 1994's At Action Park, Terraform is an album worth owning (note the beautiful gatefold jacket featuring Chesley Bonestell's vintage space paintings). Shellac has yet to top its first two brilliant singles. But this album begins to refer back to Albini's earlier work ("Mountain of Garbage" is a sequel of sorts to Big Black's "Kitty Empire") while also expanding the band's textures--pianissimo dynamics! Crooning!

Luckily, there are no noodly guitar solos or string orchestras. But who knows--maybe a track or two from Terraform will end up on Golden Hits of the Indie '90s. (Touch and Go Records)

Back to A&E...