NEWS/NOISE NOISE
WANDERING YOUTH AND FOUND NIRVANA In music news this week, it’s all about things lost and found. Like the original slow movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet in G, Opus 18 Number 2. The Hove constantly revised his music, regularly discarding what most people would consider masterpieces. That movement was performed once in 1799 and then revised to the version known today, meaning it hasn’t been heard for more than 200 years. Though the original movement was lost, Professor Barr y Cooper of the University of Manchester has reassembled it from sketches in ol’ Ludwig Van’s personal papers. “This movement is of particular importance, as it stands out as the last substantial work that Beethoven composed in full and apparently had per formed in 1799 before it was discarded and lost,” Cooper said. Also lost and found is an unfinished track from another genius with bad hair: one Kurt Donald Cobain. In a recent interview by Jon Stewart with Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, the surviving members of Nirvana, and Butch Vig of Garbage (who produced the band’s smash album Nevermind) it was revealed that K-Cob and the boys recorded a track called “Song in D” that wasn’t included on the album because it never received lyrics. Spin Magazine reported that Grohl then quipped that the lost song means it’s time for a new box set. And though he wasn’t technically “lost,” Boise’s own Trevor Powers, aka Youth Lagoon, has returned home from wandering about the country on a national tour to support his critically-lauded debut album The Year of Hibernation. The Record Exchange hosted an in-store appearance with Powers for all the local Lagoon-a-tics with specials on vinyl copies of his album and other special releases from Fat Possum, the label that snatched him up after only four live shows here in Boise. But Powers isn’t the only rambling Boisean musically associated with corpulence to find his way back to town. Bill LaBounty, formerly of Boise band Fat Chance, cofounded by Boisean Steve Eaton, will be in town for a special performance at The Blue Door Cafe on Saturday, Oct. 15. Since his days in Fat Chance, LaBounty has written more than 100 songs for megastars like Brooks and Dunn, Sawyer Brown, Tim McGraw and more. Twenty-five of them even received BMI awards. That per formance is being presented by the Idaho Songwriter’s Association. Tickets are on sale at idahosongwriters. com for $25. —Josh Gross
22 | OCTOBER 12–18, 2011 | BOISEweekly
FR EEK OR PS AT EN.W IK IPEDIA
There’s youths in this here lagoon.
KEEPING THE DIY FAITH Steve Albini relishes Shellac’s unvarnished power CHRIS PARKER If punk rock still stood for a certain way of doing things and approaching life, then you might characterize Steve Albini as a punk-rock godfather. Steadfastly anti-corporate, DIY and a purveyor of music as no-frills as his famous production style, Albini is an underground icon who still preaches the gospel of self-sufficiency at the core of DIY. “It’s true in almost any enterprise. If you do things for a reason other than that you really want to do that thing, then that thing you end up doing becomes a tool, and most tools get dull after a while,” Albini said from his studio, he concentrates heavily on mic placement and tends to shy away from knob-twiddling unless Electrical Audio. “That’s the way I’ve always instructed to by the band. approached creative endeavors—to try to “I tend to not get involved in creative decimake them satisfying in their own right. Then sions in the studio because I’m an ignorant it doesn’t matter what the result is.” outsider. I haven’t done those eight-hour drives As a musician, Albini founded the influenwhere the whole life story and philosophy of tial act Big Black in Chicago during the early the band has been worked out in conversation. ’80s. Its blend of bleak, crushing guitars and I haven’t lived through the helping-your-drunkdrum-machine beats would serve as an early inspiration for mainstream bands like Ministry en-friend-up-the-stairs-moments that build the bonds of fraternity that are the basis of bands, and Nine Inch Nails. Meanwhile, the aggresso I really have no right to and no perspective sive guitar brutality rallied legions of late ’80s to tell them that this song should actually be Midwestern bands—Tar, Helmet, The Jesus a little bit faster or that maybe the guitar solo Lizard, the Cows, Killdozer—under the noiseshouldn’t be so long,” Albini said. rock banner. “I didn’t start out from that perspective, Albini carried over that scabrous, hardobviously. When you’re first put in the position hewn minimalist sound when he started of making recordings for other people, after Shellac with bassist Bob Weston (Volcano a couple of sessions you realize you actually Suns) and drummer Todd Trainer (Breaking Circus) in 1992. Since then, they have released have a lot of power and that you could actufour albums along with a handful of EPs and 7 ally influence the outcome. And initially, at least, it’s seductive. The inches. Most of Albini’s first couple sessions I time is spent burnishdid for other people, ing his reputation as With Helen Money. Monday, Oct. 17, 9 p.m., I probably did go a one of the busiest, most $10 adv., $15 show. little too far in trying affordable big-name VISUAL ARTS COLLECTIVE to make things suit producers in the busi3638 Osage St., Garden City myself,” Albini said. ness. As a result, he’s 208-424-8297 visualartscollective.com “It was through that recorded plenty of big experience of seeing names like Nirvana, what effect that had on Pixies, Bush, Cheap other people that I realized that was not the Trick, Nine Inch Nails, and far lesser-known way to approach it, and it kind of resonated ones like Neurosis, Wrangler Brutes, Om and with my perspective on the rest of everything Scout Niblett. else involved in the music scene, which is that His production style reflects his musical bands mattered and they should be treated aesthetic, preferring the raw and unadorned with respect,” he said. sound of a live band to the artificiality of meA similar idea continues to drive Shellac. ticulous multi-tracking. He’s often credited on Though releases have been rather sporadic— albums as an engineer rather than a producer, with seven years separating 2007’s Excellent an expression of his desire to capture the band’s true sound as opposed to tweaking and Italian Greyhound and its predecessor, 1,000 polishing it into something it’s not. As a result, Hurts—each came out of a simple desire to
Shellac(k)ing takes concentration. And shellac.
make music. Recordings and tours happen when they feel like it or they don’t happen. If Shellac is standing in front of you, it’s because the band wants to be there. Band members book their own relatively short tours and only leave when they’re in the mood, helping to ensure an inspired rather than perfunctory performance. “A lot of bands end up in a position where they have to do something for their band so it ends up becoming an obligation in the same way that because you have to go to your job every day you end up resenting it,” Albini said. “So I’ve never allowed my band to create obligations for me. If we make a commitment of time to do something that’s always by consensus, and we don’t give ourselves deadlines for [making records] we just do it and when they’re done, they’re done.” That said, Albini admits that Shellac has done a good bit of recording already and— while not wanting to fence them in—he expects to have a new album out by this time next year. Meanwhile, he couldn’t be happier about the developments of the last decade, which he sees as having freed musicians from the seductive spectre of major labels bargaining for their souls. “The music business is no longer the record business. It’s actually about music. It’s about people playing music in front of other people for a living,” he said. “Now when people are playing stuff on their iPod, they’re much more likely to be playing something they stumbled upon themselves and that genuinely suits them. A fair bit of it is going to be stuff that never got an airing in the commercial music marketplace because there was no label support for it, or the band wasn’t sexy on television or whatever. So there are an awful lot of bands whose music is becoming popular based on its merits, and I think that’s fantastic.” WWW. B O I S E WE E KLY. C O M