Big Black
Songs About Fucking

THE REVIEW

The Big Black were an old Steve Albini band. This album stands to Shellac's "Action Park" as a violent black and white comic in cheap paper stands to another deluxe edition by the same author, with the style now more "clean" and defined.

However, don't think of the cover image (gorgeous! and you should see the back), the images are dirty and unclear. Albini's "fucking songs" from "heart of shit" are claustrophobic and dark rooms.

All the tracks start with bass and electronic drum hits with echo (oh yes! never heard an e.d. so rock, anyway) to outline the environment, then Albini and Durango's guitars and the voice enter, and nothing makes sense anymore: you're inside suffering an assault.
The guitars rarely indulge in "defined" riffs but rather seem like sawing and twisting of sheets, other times (Fish Fry) it feels like they're being slammed against one wall and then the other.

Alternating are white-hot punk assaults (The Power..., L Dopa, Colombian Necktie, Ergot, Fish Fry) and slower, darker tracks. The first ones, dense with stop and go, let you breathe for a second to bruise your brain in the following ones. In the latter (in which you seem to hear foreshadowings of Slint-Tweez and Helmet-Strap It On) it's Albini's malicious voice that makes the difference, angular, hysterical, more evil than ever, telling the usual stories from Heart book.
("the backbone of this country are the independent truckers / the power of the trucker comes from his truck / the best part is mm mm the cab bed / that's where the truckers fortify their backbone, backbone, backbone / mm mm mm / a punch in the face / mm mm mm / move like an animal, grunt like an animal..." (The Power of Independent Trucking).
Ergot describes the sensations of those who ate the wafers made with bread infected with this psychedelic fungus, which, according to Albini, are due to the visions of the early Christians...).
Two covers: "The Model" (Kraftwerk), splendid, my flight in a bomber over a U.S. metropolis, "He's a Whore" (Cheap Trick), curious, a pop pastry gone bad, like Nirvana forced to play for the 999th time.

Not an easy record, but on my very personal scorecard.