Shellac

What can we say about the dearly departed? No words can cut it - This record will always have been born in the sad shadow of Steve Albini’s passing but, despite (or perhaps because of) that grim context, it hits double hard.

As a result of the circumstances, we found ourselves scouring the lyrics for ‘To All Trains’, imbuing lines written long before the fact with layers of meaning never originally intended. All the talk of death, of hell, the request to “remember him as he was: hale and strong”, served as finality, as closure for an unexpected, gut-punching grief.

But alongside all of that, completely refusing to lie down, is the compellingly disruptive and discordant music.

Shellac were never interested in dealing with beauty. Theirs was a grit and skew that is as entirely “all American” as Harmony Korine and the band’s beloved baseball. The trademark angular guitars that launched a thousand post-punk bands are ever-present, as are the stop-start rhythms which writhe and lurch like electrocuted cattle, but it’s that inimitable blend of all of the above with an inventively lyrical and impassioned delivery, coming together in a burning throb which only they have truly mastered, that means this leaves us nursing a thousand hurts.