LET'S GO RECORD SHOPPING: Shellac's "To All Trains"

The one where Your Humble Author knows he enjoyed Steve Albini's final musical statement and feels you should check it out, but has trouble finding the words to do so.

SHELLAC
To All Trains
(Touch And Go) (LP, CD, download/stream)

PRODUCERS/ENGINEERS: Steve Albini, Bob Weston and Todd Trainer
MUSICIANS: Steve Albini (vocals, guitar), Bob Weston (vocals, bass), Todd Trainer (drums)
BUY OR STREAM

When I eulogised Steve Albini last week, I clearly stated that every album in Shellac’s discography, from their debut At Action Park to the last album to be released in Albini’s lifetime, 2019’s The End of Radio, is “worth a listen or several” - and I would say the same for the entire discography of his first band Big Black and the lone two releases of his interim project Rapeman as well. And I will admit that what has ended up being the band’s last album, To All Trains - already in the can and scheduled for release yesterday (May 17) before Albini was prematurely promoted to staff member at The Great Recording Studio In The Sky - is equally as worthy of that statement.

To All Trains was supposed to be just another volume in the musical explorations of Albini, bassist/vocalist Bob Weston and drummer Todd Trainer, and it’s more of the same that longtime listeners have come to expect from the band. Obviously, with the trio’s expertise as recording engineers (and Weston’s as a Grade AAA mastering engineer) and having access to one of the best studios on the planet (yet not abusing it - it’s obvious with every release that the band recorded live in the studio with minimal if any overdubs), it’s going to sound pristine. Albini’s literally metallic guitar tone (aluminum-bodied Travis Bean guitars played with copper plectrums) and abrasive sounding guitar mofits, Weston’s kaiju-summoning bass, and Trainer’s tight timekeeping are all in full force. Anyone that has followed Shellac over the past thirty years would have embraced it with open arms even if the worst thing that happened to Steve in the past two weeks was twisting an ankle or somesuch minor domestic mishap.

The album is the band’s shortest at 28 minutes - pretty much Reign In Blood length. Only you probably woudn’t know it unless you looked at the album length on your preferred streaming service. (And as of yesterday, owing to pre-planning by the band, the Shellac and Big Black catalogs reappeared on Spotify. Contrary to a Brooklyn Vegan report, both discographies remained on higher-quality outlets like Apple Music and Qobuz.) It will be an album you’ll be coming back to, just like the rest of the Shellac catalog.

I’ve managed to judge To All Trains to be of high quality after a couple of listens via Apple Music (Touch And Go Records had already sold out the album’s first pressing after the release had been announced back in March) while trying to keep out of mind the fact that Albini is no longer in this dimension with us. And I managed to succeed until I got to the closing track of the album, “I Don’t Fear Hell” and got to the song’s chorus:

If there's a heaven, I hope they're having fun 'Cause if there's a hell, I'm going to know everyone

Too ironic. Too coincidental. A good part of me wanted to weep. Fate and a sudden heart attack pulled the rug out from under everyone that knew, worked with, admired, and loved Steve Albini. And seemingly typical of Albini, he wrote his own epitaph without even intending to do so.

I think I’m going to binge the entire Shellac and Big Black discographies right now. You should too.