Big Black Album Recommendations

The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Big Black

[#] Lungs (1982)

Prime Big Black? No. Primal Big Black? Absolutely.

Reviewed April 28, 2018

You probably know Steve Albini more for his "don't call me a producer" production work than his musical output, but neither are to be taken for granted. Albini's first band, Big Black, booked their own shows, sung about midwestern kiddy rape, made drum machines sound fucking scary, and exposed a new generation of musicians to punk's promise of total DIY freedom. Once their lineup solidified with 1984's Racer-X, Big Black burned white hot, but the beginning of their story started much differently, with an angry loser out of Montana, a Roland TR-606, and a 4-track.

It's easy to dismiss Lungs. Albini really can't muster the "yes, I speak from experience when I scream about kicking a girl's head in" fury of prime Big Black, and the guitars are anemic. What Lungs lacks in overt aggression, though, it makes up for in stark isolation. The drum machine, Big Black's trademark, still pounds here, the heart and ribcage around the monologue about creepy-crawlies on "Steelworker". Albini sounds like he's on death's doorstep on "The Crack", and "Rip" shows off either a bit of vulnerability—or mercy, how you look at it. I'm biased, given how Lungs influenced my own high school noise escapades, but I do think there's something to this, even if it's just crack fumes.

(Addendum: I highly recommend getting this one on vinyl if you dig it. What sounds a bit flat on my digital copy fucking tears out of the speakers on vinyl. Well worth it.)