Tour the Art Institute on Silkworm's Chicago turf and use reverse chronology as the organizing principal of your walkthrough. Start in the contemporary art rooms and move through four-hundred-plus years of Individual Masters, then a long ways back to the rooms showcasing ancient pieces. You can work up a pretty good bummer realizing how you're forced to herald the lone, rare Singular Geniuses, only to end up looking at treasures made by anonymous members of communities in which most people were artisans of some kind, capable of at least perfunctorily creative craftsmanship. If you're in the right pissy, generalizing mood, you can wonder if we slather over Geniuses out of a kind of guilt because they tap into something that we deep-down know shouldn't be so rare. Since most of us can barely figure out how to feed ourselves, we jump at the chance to applaud anyone with some leftover specialness. The whole mess is enough to make you tired of the accidental fascism of Geniuses filling supposedly organic 'leadership vacuums,' offering us chances to confirm our inferiority as we stand in the crowd at their concerts, or go to their movies, or read their books, viewing our consumption of them as sufficiently sophisticated and 'artistic' enough to justify the rest of our afternoon's being spent playing video games or bitching at our sex-pals or staring at the ceiling or crying into our cans of Surge.

Okay, that kneejerk theory is stoops: I know that 'the people' aren't going to rise up from quoting Aflac commercials to start an artistic revolution, and even if it did happen I bet I'd sleep through the best parts. Even back-burner geniuses have consistent work ethics. Plus, those shangri-la ancient art-cultures probably didn't have access to convenient toilets of every personality-reflecting color. Alls I'm saying is that we gotta practice moderation and stop demanding that every album announce an Elvrum or Mangum or Yorke. As soon as you ease up on the need for a new disposable Jesus to mimic, you realize that there's a lot to be said for the refreshing geniuslessness of bands like Silkworm.

Silkworm has no star to fantasize about sleeping with. No dominating image or attitude emerges to influence your hairstyle. The lyrics never leave you throttled by the image of them being read out of a Damn-I'm-Clever Notebook #47. Instead of life-affirming passion, their albums, Italian Platinum gloriously included, offer subtle slapstick nihilism. Their website makes several references to how shocked they are that they still exist, and it dubs their own discography "shit we have shat." Their concert journals humbly acknowledge that their slippery fit-rock is often incidental music for drunks to fidget and commingle to. Maybe the Genius thing is a factor in sustainability; it's hard to listen to what Pavement and Silkworm were doing ten years ago and conclude that Silkworm would outlast the other. They get overlooked as old-guard almost-weres, but an elite armada of folks with extensive CD budgets remain rightfully grateful for their unambitious clamor.

Italian Platinum, whose packaging is so minimal that it's a waste of paper, is the band's best release since 1996's whoopass and splashy Firewater, though it just sounds like uninviting racket the first time you hear it, and it continues Firewater's preoccupation with alcohol. In other words, if Firewater is their OK Libations, this disc is their Kid AA-- slightly more penitent and therefore a great soundtrack for a punitive post-hangover jog. Anyone who has ever dropped a bottle opener and then broken their finger trying to get it out from behind the fridge will appreciate "Bourbon Beard" and its sloshy, regretful counterparts.

Coach Albini once again corroborates their convulsive assault, micing the guitars and vocals warmly, while the bass and drums maintain his standard warplane-hangar dynamics. The sound is earthily underscored by all manner of piano, organ, clavinet, and synthy touches, as well as guest vocalist Kelly Hogan's counterintuitive heartthroat. Silkworm brings the chops, working odd pauses into their solos like J. Mascis undergoing physical therapy. Riffs abound, some Kirk Hammett fretfests go down, and whammy bars occasionally peer out to inspire air-guitarists everywhere. The abundance of classic tropes (axe histrionics, anthemic refrain buildups, epic breakdowns, backup 'bops' and 'oohs') will leave you trying to gauge the band's sincerity. Are they spoofing what's been done to death, or nominating themselves as deserving candidates to give the oft-resurrected rock horse a respectful, hellacious kick?

Italian Platinum is a slow-burner, an acquired taste, like, uh, Pawpaw's hard liquor. It grew on everyone I know who was in proximity to multiple spins, reducing several of them to murmuring choruses from hits like the opener "(I Hope U) Don't Survive," the retro shoutalong "The Old You," the no-wave "The Brain," the pollution-happy hoedown "Dirty Air," and the clunkily-titled but killer "A Cockfight of Feelings," a mud-puddle reminder that the verse-chorus-verse formula can be a lil' abstruse. Even the subdued, repetitive "Moving," which is about moving in the unmetaphorical way that the Go-Gos' "Vacation" was about vacations, colonizes your tune-lobe. If only radio switched to an all-scab format, Silkworm's lurch-and-bounce could be credited for embracing the obvious throb of concise garage-prog-- a style you could call, to quote one of this album's few bombs, "world-proof."

-William Bowers, June 14th, 2002