Shrimp Boat: Something Grand : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

The Chicago post-rock scene of the Nineties -- the pneumatic rhapsodies of Tortoise, the chamber pop of the Sea and Cake, the tone poetry of Gastr del Sol -- starts here, with the twisted-country and art-garage games of local legends Shrimp Boat. Co-founded in 1985 by singer-guitarist Sam Prekop (now in the Sea and Cake) and including future Liz Phair producer Brad Wood, the group made three albums but also this multidisc set of work tapes ranging from arch minstrelsy to exultantly cerebral pop -- Pere Ubu high on the haystack mysticism of Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. Shrimp Boat's early, rambling tonality will be hard going if you have little love for the Residents' Seventies japes and Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica. The tighter, knotty twang of the 1990-93 recordings is more immediately engaging, with its whiffs of Appalachia and Hawaiian slack-key-guitar paradise. Shrimp Boat made only minor waves in their time, but what they helped to start in Chicago, and left behind, is strangely grand.