Shellac: 1000 Hurts : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Maybe Steve Albini is actually trying to lose fans. Between the infamous cover of Big Black's Headache EP, the Rapeman project and the cute BIG BLACK TOOLS T-shirt, Albini's intermittent genius only occasionally overcomes his taste for shocking and/or boring his cultish audience. Shellac is Albini's anti-rock project: slow, dark and stripped down, with big drums, clear, zinging guitar and Albini's plain voice disaffectedly reporting his lyrics. Much of 1000 Hurts sounds like a live performance in which Albini, drummer Todd Trainer and bassist Bob Weston try to exasperate their listeners -- kicking off with a kill-the-bitch screed that would make Eminem wince, stretching out the edgy tension of "Mama Gina" with an abstruse spoken-word midsection and ear-splitting thrash. Rock assaults like "Ghosts" are too ironic to be headbangers; everything else is just grueling and self-satisfied. If Albini is so pissed off at rock, why bother making it? (RS 850)

ARION BERGER