In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well—some inspired by a weekly theme and some not, but always songs worth hearing. Twenty years ago this October, Shellac announced ...

Forget the Platonic ideal, Shellac have always aspired to the sardonic ideal. On a ditty cheekily titled “Chick New Wave” — off To All Trains, the noise-rock group’s sixth and final album following ...

Bandleader-recording engineer Steve Albini has worked with some pretty weighty acts: Nirvana, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, the Pixies and PJ Harvey among them. But the band he loves to ruminate ...

This week, Canada gives the Liberal Party a parliamentary majority, bringing Justin Trudeau to power as prime minister. Here’s “Canada” by Shellac, from their 1998 record Terraform. Frontman and ...

Albini and vocalist-bassist Bob Weston sing most songs with a smirk. There’s the album’s “How I Wrote How I Wrote ‘Elastic Man’ (cock & bull),” whose title takes the piss out of the Fall song from ...