Shellac Concert

Shellac is one of my favorites bands. It’s punk, noisy, it doesn’t take itself too seriously etc. Every song I feel like “this is the kind of song I would want to do if I had a band again”.

The location was in a place called B.Leza, which a pun with Beleza, aka “cool”. It’s near the pier, so a nice atmosphere!

The opening act was by the portuguese artist Puçanga, not really my cup of tea and I don’t think it had anything to do with Shellac, but it didn’t spoil the fun.

We managed to get real close to the stage. Since my wife is kinda short (even for Portugal’s standards) it ended up being pretty helpful.

The show is exactly what you expect. Songs are (both in tempo and duration), engaging and fun. One thing I really noticed is how they subvert your expectations, but not enough to become something else like so many bands do. You can see they are playing within certain limits, which IMO ends up more engaging.

One interesting point is that Steve Albini tells some bits. He’s very engaging and good with words. There was a story on Karaoke Nights, and how he hates these kind of “Karaoke Pros”. He explained how one of the songs is about a girl that admires how his father is a Scrapper (aka some kind of Catador de lixo), which he make it very clear it wasn’t about making fun of them, which I found curious. Then he explained a song they contributed to an album for a fake movie about a Police force which is against fun (lol), in the end he invites the crowd to yell “We stand for the Defenders of Fun!”. So silly, I love it.

Couple interesting things: there was quite a few people with somewhat professional cameras. I guess that’s one of the few places that don’t bother checking people’s bags. Speaking of that, at some point a girl started to scream at a guy. I didn’t see exactly what happened, by my understanding is that he was either taking too many pictures and/or got in her way (which btw she was enjoying the show quite a bit!). I understand her, but she also looked a little bit crazy. I won’t take a position in this matter.

After the concert we chilled a little a bit at the pier.

Final review, I loved it and would watch it again (SPOILERS: already did it).