Minnesota lost its most blistering star when Todd Trainer, drummer of Shellac and formerly of Riflesport and Breaking Circus, packed up his bags after losing his job as a hair-care distributor and moved to Chicago to take up residence at Steve Albini's Electrical Audio Studio. With his faithful dog - an Italian Greyhound named Uffizi - at his side, Trainer began to work in earnest on his most fiendish of experiments: the entity known only as Brick Layer Cake. The result is his newest solo record, Whatchamacallit, the third such release under the BLC moniker.

And, Good Lord, this new album is just gorgeous! Guitar lines that just dig their way slowly and painfully and repetitively through your head, pounding and pounding and fading to air-siren wails that drone and quiver in the background as though forgotten, joined by more and more layers and screaming and wailing and other Dante-inspiring guitar riffs. Lyrically, this is a joke, or frighteningly serious, or both, droning lectures about porn stars and rock stars and sock cocks and syringes, murder, being ridden like a buckin' bronco, and just a multitude of sins in general. This is the perfect record to play to get rid of the smart alecky music critics at your next party, and all the girls, too.

I spoke to the frighteningly long-limbed Mr. Trainer just hours before he was set to leave for the UK to host All Tomorrow's Parties with the rest of Shellac, as well as tour as a solo act through parts of the UK before returning here to the States.

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Cosmik: So what would you say this album is about, what the theme of the project is?

Todd: It was quite thematic, actually, to begin with. I made a conscious effort - it was borderlining - it was literally on the brink of being a concept album, if you will. I would like to do that sometime, although this album just didn't have enough highs and lows to make a complete package. I didn't want it to be a real singular perspective, and I also had accumulated quite a few songs over the past, so I narrowed this record down to a collection of what I thought was relatively cohesive material. I hate to think that there's an overall theme to the record.

Cosmik: The titles mention "cake" and "icing" a lot, enough to make one think that might be part of a theme.

Todd: Yeah. Icing has definitely always been a part of the visual aspect of Brick Layer Cake. All four records have had icing on the covers, both front and back covers - literally all the artwork that has ever appeared on my records is icing, so that's a theme, an aesthetic theme.

Cosmik: Actually, when I was looking at the back cover, reading the titles off, I thought there were supposed to be 12 songs on it because the last four credits on the album kind of run in with the song title list.

Todd: My records have been very confusing because of my use of icing in the artwork. Icing is a rather limited medium - I shouldn't say "limited." It's an unforgiving medium to work with, because you only get one chance to really do it right. I'm happy that my records are not loaded with information, not overwhelmed with unimportant information, and that has to do with using icing as a writing tool because it is a very difficult medium to work with. I just try to put the essential information in the liner notes, but I realize that in icing, sometimes, it's tough to differentiate the song titles from the credits. But anyone who hears the records more than once that pays attention to the song titles should inevitably be able to make sense of the album.

Cosmik: So is it an actual cake on the album cover?

Todd: It is actual frosting. It was freshly-made icing, prepared by myself, covering a large cardboard box. I used cakes to begin with - I think I used cakes on the first two records, but it just got too expensive having a front cover cake, and a back cover cake. And when I was making vinyl records as well, each side would have another cake pictured on them, and I was making all the cakes and icing them myself - although I did have help at one time, a friend named Flower (Flour?) helped me with the first cake. But from that point on, I've been doing it by myself, and, like anything, I've gotten better at it. But the cardboard boxes are less expensive.

Cosmik: Plus, you don't end up with a whole bunch of cakes.

Todd: Oh, that's not a problem. That part of cake-making is always rewarding, the leftover cakes from the photo shoot.

Cosmik: So is that a tooth candle on top of the cake?

Todd: Yes.

Cosmik: Okay. My husband thought it was a penis.

Todd: No, it is a tooth. Again, that's something that's been a part of the visual history of the band, is the tooth. That stems from when in the late '80s, when Brick Layer Cake started, there was a lot of skull and crossbones, lots of very hard-core images associated with bands, and I wanted to pick the least harmless and most amusing of all the bones to identify with, and I settled on the tooth.

Cosmik: Do you have any plans to send a copy of the "Whatchamacallit" song to the Hershey Corporation to see if they want to use it in any of their commercials?

Todd: I hadn't, no. That's an excellent idea, especially if there's a lifetime supply of Hershey products involved. I guess it would be worth a shot, a shot at a life of luxury. A lifetime supply of chocolate.

(C) 2002 - Holly Day