Chicago rock group Shellac will embark on a short European tour in late May and early June. The trio, which consists of iconoclastic vocalist-guitarist Steve Albini, bassist Bob Weston and drummer Todd Trainer, has had an unusually busy year already with tours in South America and Eastern Europe. Although they’ve played sporadic shows throughout their career, they’ve toured more frequently in the past year since releasing their fourth album, Excellent Italian Greyhound (Touch and Go). The trek finds them starting out at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound Festival and ending at Paris’s Villette Sonique fest. At the dates in between these festivals, the band will perform with Boston post-punks Mission of Burma, a band which also features Weston.
In other Shellac news, the group donated a copy of their rare, for-friends-only The Futurist LP in January to an auction that benefited Callum Robbins–son of Jawbox frontman J. Robbins–who is suffering from spinal muscular atrophy. In April, it was announced Albini would be recording the new solo album from Stone Temple Pilot Scott Weiland. Shellac’s next announced North American date is their September appearance at ATP New York, a three-day festival to be held in Monticello, New York, which was cultivated by re-formed shoegazers My Bloody Valentine.
Shellac tour dates:
May 31, Primavera Sound Festival - Barcelona, Spain
June 8, Moby Dick - Madrid, Spain
June 3, Teatro Jovellanos - Gijon, Spain
June 4, Antzokia - Bilbao, Spain
June 5, BT 59 - Bordeaux, France
June 6, L’Olympic - Nantes, France
June 7, Villette Sonique - Paris, France
Matador’s reissue of Mission of Burma three-record catalog offers incontrovertible proof that Boston was the place to be in the 1980s. Sure, you could say the same about Austin and Minneapolis, but this year record companies are shining a light on Massachusetts’s finest. First, Merge issued the Big Dipper anthology Supercluster; next Taang will be tackling the Volcano Suns (in Biblical terms, Burma begat the Suns, while the Suns begat Dipper).
Signed to local label Ace of Hearts, Burma (1979-83) consisted of Roger Miller (guitar), Clint Conley (bass), Peter Prescott (drums), and Martin Swope (tapes). After the Signals, Calls and Marches EP and before the live Horrible Truth About Burma LP, Burma released 1982’s Vs.. It was their sole full-length with the original line-up (more on that below). Matador dubs these re-mastered CD/DVD sets The Definitive Editions (Ryko previously did the honors in the 1990s). In the press notes, Miller states, “We were trying to mimic the natural feel of a live performance.” They succeeded in doing just that, though the clear separation of each instrument represents an advantage over The Horrible Truth. If nothing surpasses classic Signals singles “Academy Fight Song” and “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver,” “The Ballad of Johnny Burma” and “That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate” come close (this edition features four bonus tracks and a DVD of their second-to-last Boston gig).
After the group’s demise, which came about largely because of Miller’s tinnitus, he formed the non-touring outfit Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, Prescott started the Suns (who reunited in 2005), and Conley worked as a TV producer before creating Consonant in 2001. If Burma’s legendary reputation rests largely on moves made decades ago, the good news is that their ecstatically received 2002 reunion and subsequent albums, Onoffon and Obliterati, did nothing to tarnish that legend (only Swope opted out). Few musical groups, post-punk or otherwise, can make the same claim. Reunions may be a dime a dozen, but Mission of Burma, in their patented mix of fury and control, was a one-of-a-kind band.
We’re living in a time of post-postmodern capitalism, marked by a beleaguered music industry, Internet it-people, reunion tours amok, and a mucked up musical field littered with pastiche, mash-ups, bricolage, piracy, and virtual landmines. In this context, what the hell is a re-release, anyway? By gum, everything old is new again; that’s the cardinal lesson of YouTube. This is just to say that Mission of Burma, in re-releasing a remastered version of their landmark 1981 release Signals, Calls, and Marches this week, once again showcase their uncanny knack for bad timing–something Michael Azerrad astutely observed in Our Band Could Be Your Life, his tome to the origins of the ‘80s underground rock scene. Back then, Mission of Burma arrived, guitars blazing, to deliver a souped-up punk smorgasbord–a few years before a scene could have really gelled around them, and they fizzled too soon. Now, they come just in time to see the album tanking as a format, and music labels not yet glommed on to a better distribution mechanism.
All that said, there’s a reason Mission of Burma are usually tagged as the hardest-working, ahead-of-their-time, too-short-lived, bestest-indie-punk-band ever. Signals, Calls, and Marches has not just aged well–it maintains an eerie prescience, especially in tracks like “Red,” “Max Ernst,” and “Outlaw.” Proof positive that, in the days of digital media, it’s getting harder and harder to distinguish past from present. The album goes by in a flash of asymmetrical brouhaha, barking boy vocals, and intelligent riffing, and you just want to play it over again. And again.