Steve Albini Breaks Down Shellac's 'Dude Incredible' Track by Track

Published Sep 04, 2014

On September 16, Shellac will release Dude Incredible , on Touch and Go . As previously reported, it's their fifth proper album and first release since 2007's Excellent Italian Greyhound . While little has been revealed about the impending LP since its official announcement, Shellac singer/guitarist Steve Albini has now shed much more light on the new album.On podcast episode 120 of Kreative Kontrol with Vish Khanna , Albini previewed the new album, which has been teased since at least 2008 , by agreeing to encapsulate each of the nine songs with one word, then add a slight elaboration that amounts to "stories behind the songs" that no one has heard yet. (Shellac don't do advances to press or anyone else.)Here's how Albini broke down what he and singer/bassist Bob Weston and singer/drummer Todd Trainer came up with for each song, in sequence, onOne word: "monkeys"One word: "compulsive"One word: "intercourse"One word: "vandalism"One word: "survey"One word: "altogether"One word: "Indiana."The Big Red SongbookOne word: "pun."One word: "snappy."As Albini discussed these songs, he acknowledged thatmight have a conceptual framework."It's circumstantial," he clarifies. "We were caught in a conversational loop about the surveyor thing and then we had these songs that we were working on at the time, and they ended up getting banded together without it being expressed. I suppose there's a tiny bit of continuity withand the sense of adventure, but I'm deriving that now, ex post facto; it's not something that we talked about."Shellac have released seven singles since 1993, their most recent being a split with Caesar that appeared in a Dutch comic book in 2000. In some instances, used copies of rare or out-of-print Shellac vinyl have been selling for hundreds of dollars online, leading some fans to wonder if a singles compilation might ever be forthcoming."We've talked about it," Albini reveals. "There are a couple ofand some old singles — we've talked about assembling all of that together as a compilation album. On one hand, I'm not into the idea of repackaging material that's already available. On the other hand, I'm not into going through the effort of making more covers for the singles, which is what it boils down to."I don't know that we've resolved it. We've talked about it and I think we've conceptually gotten our head around the idea of making a compilation of those early, oddball recordings and thebut we haven't committed to doing it yet."A fan of Canada, Albini is scheduled to appear at Pop Montreal in September for a speaking engagement, a recording symposium with Hotel2Tango engineer Howard Bilerman, and a live cooking exhibition. As recently reported , he also recorded the upcomingLP by Winnipeg band Conduct , who will release their album November 4 through hometown imprint Public Tone Listen to this entire interview with Steve Albini (most of which is about baseball and poker) on Kreative Kontrol with Vish Khanna