Shellac-Terraform (1998)

 

Artist: Shellac

Title: Terraform

Label: Touch and Go

Format: LP

Cat #: TG200

Year of Release: 1998

Country and Year of Edition Issue: US 1998 180 gram vinyl with handwritten note "The joke's on you. You are a boring person" signed Steve Albini with 850 on the back of the slip of paper

Listed Condition VG+/VG+: 

Sell Date: 5/8/24

Sell Price:$23.74

Discogs Last Sold: 5/11/24 $37.63

Low: $15.00 3/28/24 VG+/VG+

Median: $29.05

Average: $30.46

High: $69.99

Current low price: $33.09

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 10

Have/Want: 4318/1063

Where Sold: Chicago, IL

Time it took to sell: 9 years

Where and When Bought: new upon release NYC Kim's Underground on St. Marks

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: A-

Sad To See It Go: No

A few days ago in my previous Shellac write-up, I told you there was a sale I "lost"  that sold almost immediately upon Albini's death after being up for sale at various higher prices for about 9 years.  Since I've given my eulogy already, I'll just provide a link to it at the end.  Albini was cremated and his funeral link is public if you would like to express anything direct to his family and friends.

On to the topic at hand, this record featured a handwritten numbered (850) slip of paper with Albini's signature.  Looks like pen to me, but maybe the "joke" was that it was printed since the note reads "The joke's on you! You are a boring person!" Steve Albini.   Well, maybe the joke was on me because I let the record go along with the note for less than $25 bucks.  Maybe the buyer will auction it off for a thousand dollars.  Maybe there are 5,000 of these printed up.  Who knows.  In the spirit of Albini however, I honored the sale even if I suspect the buyer made out.  At least it gave me a funny story for this blog in time of tragedy.

Maybe the joke was on me because my whole idea of the blog upon formation was to reduce music to base capitalism (the sale, the Discogs value, the reductive Christgau style letter grade, etc.) in DIRECT response to ethos grinders like Ian MacKaye and of course Albini.  The humanization was my written descriptive relationship to the product.  So, ha, the joke was on me and also on you dear reader, but hopefully you get the joke that life is.

As for this record, it opens with the nail pulling monotony of "Didn't We Deserve A Look At You The Way You Really Are" and closes with two of Shellac's greatest songs: "House Full of Garbage" and "Copper."  "Canada" is up there as well.  And don't forget "This Is A Picture" whose title I never knew, just the music and this is back when I was still doing a radio show.

In particular, "House Full of Garbage" is perhaps Albini's greatest lyrical achievement.  He always had a way of perverse cinematic description--witness "Budd" from debut Rapeman EP release or the Times cited masterpiece "Prayer To God."  But the description of "House Full of Garbage" has voyeur qualities not for the couple that "make love," but for what is to come in the backdrop.  The doo-doo AND the feces on the walls.   Perhaps the most brilliant lyrical couplet within a couplet.  The prurient activity being witnessed, either actively or some point in time, is irrelevant. You are told to imagine a man so tall he put a monument to himself, a mountain of garbage in his house and this garbage is secondary to this vision.  "Isn't Doo-Doo and Feces the same thing?" you may ask.

Clearly it is not.

For further review: 

Shellac-The Rude Gesture: A Pictorial History (1993)