Shellac / Big’n / Brise-Glace / U.S. Maple

Sides 1-4 (Skin Graft)
by Nik Rainey

Let’s not mince words: Tribute albums, as a rule, suck the giant flesh-flute. Inappropriate bands doing inappropriate versions of songs that were either just fine the way they were or better relegated to cut-out-bin limbo is the order of the day, and if I were you I’d call the waitress over and have it sent back to the kitchen. However, there are a few bands whose catalog demands reinterpretation. Such is the case with those menopausal Aussie schoolboys, AC/DC. So monolithically generic are their collected works that fringe acts the world over have clamored to put their imprint on the output of Young, Scott and Young. We can thank Skin Graft for wisely opting to be selective (not that I wouldn’t want to hear Melissa Etheridge doing “She Got The Jack”) and apportioning the juice on the installment plan, seven inches at a time.

Shellac kicks off the series with “Jailbreak,” complete with electric-chair guitar, bass/drum time signatures that are decidedly un-AC/DC p.c., and some of Steve Albini’s funniest vocals ever. Big’n wires “TNT” to yer turntable with the threat that it’ll explode if it goes under 45 rpm. Brise-Glace‘s “Angus Aus Der Licht” is less cover than abstract deconstructivist homage, a guitar/razor blade rondelet that staggers around in peg-legged stereo circles until it finally collapses. And U.S. Maple gives “Sin City” a kinda No New Zealand sorta lo-fi skronkitude. With its careful packaging (dig the comic book!), band selection and overall concept, this indefinitely-continuing project (Palace Brothers and Zeni Geva are slotted for Sides 5-6) thumbs its misshapen nose at the rest of the trib tribes with a defiant, booze-raspy yell of for those devout to schlock, we pollute you! (Or something to that effect.)