Steve Albini Looks Back on Three Decades of Defiance

Thanks to more than three decades of teeth-gnashing growls, industrial-strength guitar riffs and excoriating commentary on the record industry, Steve Albini has established himself as one of rock’s most fiercely independent – and genuinely fierce – iconoclasts. His current band, noise-rock thumpsters Shellac, puts out records without promotion or aplomb (“no free lunch,” offers the only Shellac-related press release in the past seven years) and matches musical vehemence with darkly humorous lyrics and visceral songcraft.

The trio has titled its latest collection Dude Incredible, and the record finds the band exploring a variety of curious subject matter: monkey-like groupthink, the gritty history of Gary, Indiana, and something self-explanatory called “You Came in Me.” This is the band’s most accessible offering to date, but Albini has hardly softened. As a recording engineer and the owner of his own Electrical Audio studio, he has cultivated a pro-artist culture, keeping his rates low and often working seven days a week.

“Every day, I get up and make a record, go to bed, get up the next day and make a record,” he tells Rolling Stone. “It’s normal for me. I don’t know if there’s another way to do it that would have been easier on me, but I made it through. I’m fine.”

You made it very clear in your press release that the album’s title, Dude Incredible, does not contain a comma. What is your objection?
That phrase is just something that we started saying within the band, like as a sort of general exclamation or a confirmation of awesomeness. I think if the way we were saying it was as though there were a comma there, then that’s how we would’ve punctuated it. But it was always “Dude incredible” – two words.

Our previous album, Excellent Italian Greyhound, was named, in a sense, named after Uffizi, Todd’s dog who was an excellent Italian greyhound. Instead of saying “Atta boy” or “Good boy,” that’s how Todd would reward Uffizi: He would pat him on the head and say “excellent Italian greyhound.” That shifted and became something we would say about any good experience. If you have a really great coffee someplace, you’d say, “Ah, excellent Italian greyhound.” It’s like there’s a Joe Walsh album called Got Any Gum? I think that’s an incredible name for a record.

One of my favorite moments on the record is the intro to “All the Surveyors,” when you all sing together about walking the king’s road and ultimately, “Fuck the king.” How did that come about?
We were talking in practice at one point about how there’s no part of any one of our songs where all three of us sing together. So I came up with a script, poked out some notes on the piano, and we tried it. It was an idea that we had that we knocked out, so I’m content with it.

It’s a bit like a Monty Python routine.
We refer to it as the “Queen Part,” knowing full well that it doesn’t sound like Queen. I think every band has stuff like that inside their internal dialogue, where you’ll refer to a song as the “Led Zeppelin Song” or the “Buzzcocks song,” even though it’s just the chords to “Orgasm Addict” played really, really slow. For us, we tend to have a ZZ Top song every couple of rehearsals, so it’ll be like “The New ZZ Top Song” or “The Old ZZ Top Song.”

Shellac have not recorded anything like “Legs” yet.
No, you’re not going to get “Legs” out of us. That’s past the sell-by date.