ANSWER: (g)

When I was a student at the Univ. of Chicago, the radio station I D.J'ed at my senior year & beyond (WHPK -- "100 Watts of Power!") used to, traditionally, leave these plain white stickers that people would use to comment on new CD's and LP's when they came in (a sort of precursor, I'm now aware of posting sites on the Internet -- or, more likely, Usenet, which I had no notion of at the time). For example, it was pretty funny to look back -- with 20/20 hindsight, of course -- at the contemporary reaction to the first Ramones album, from '76 WPHK D.J.'s (Stuff like: "What IS this shit? All the songs sound the same! -- RT" and "I know? What the hey??? -- JS", etc.)

Well, when Shellac's "At Action Park" L.P. came out in '94, the WHOLE DAMN COVER -- which, in a sense, lended itself to this, as it was mostly a plain brown mass -- was plastered with debates & counter-debates & positions taken and rescinded on this "controversial" work of art (something I realized, much later on, is only true of stuff that the maker produces ONLY IF it will galvanize such "You don't know what you're talking about!" reactions from it's audience [c.f, Henry Miller, David Foster Wallace, other unreadable people I won't bother to mention here!]).

Having listened to it lately, I was quite surprised at how "flat" -- and I mean that in a particular, peculiar sort of way -- the music sounded; it was devoid of joy (or, really, ANY recognizable emotions whatsoever) in a way that would make Lynyrd Skynyfd seem like the emotionally-balanced, happy-go-lucky people on the planet. I wasn't sure how they managed to grind it out -- didn't KNOW it was possible to grind out all feeling -- all that I could tell was, "This was music made to, like, PROVE a POINT and nothing else . . . ?

IOW: It sucks. Royally.