If you still don't believe all the local musicians, critics, club staffers, record-store clerks, etc., who've been raving about Minneapolis' frenzied noise-punk blasters the Stnnng and their smokestack lightning for a decade now, then will you at least believe Steve Albini?
The influential Nirvana, Pixies and PJ Harvey producer and Shellac band member with notoriously finicky taste put an exclamation point on his fondness for the quintet by returning to produce their fifth album, "Veterans of Pleasure." It's out now digitally via Modern Radio and arrives on vinyl this week with a release party Friday at 7th Street Entry. Albini also produced the group's prior album, 2013's "Empire Inward," to great results.
Like on the prior record, the legendary producer let the Stnnng do its thing without much polishing or sonic trickery on "Veterans," which they recorded last year at his Chicago studio, Electrical Audio. But Albini's knack for musical mayhem seems to draw out the best/wildest from maniacal frontman Chris Besinger and the band's car-wreck-intertwined guitarists, Adam Burt and Nathan Nelson. Drummer Ben Ivascu has spent the past half-decade delivering more precise rhythms in Polica but hasn't lost his knack for bashing away with abandon, as evidenced deep into the album on such tracks as "Storming the Medical Frigate" and the guitar-less charmer "Top Hat Man."
Here's the first single as well as the opening track from the record "The Lost Nostalgia" (posted below). The entire record is now streaming via Bandcamp. Friday's Entry show is also a release party for fellow Am/Rep-style sonic youths Buildings and will feature additional noise by Gay Witch Abortion (9 p.m., $10).
