Musician/producer Steve Albini—who passed away recently at the age of 61—was a heckuva nice guy. He made pleasant, melodic music with a positive message, had nothing but good things to say about his fellow musicians, and I think read the wrong obituary. Because the Steve Albini who died about a week back was an abrasive person who made abrasive music and had a tongue dipped in battery acid.
Albini was best known for his work with the less-band-than-industrial-drill Big Black and as the no nonsense, zero-frills producer of bands both big (Nirvana)and small (Poster Children), many of whom he had hilariously scathing things to say. This was partly the reason he didn’t want his name on their records. “When I am hired to record a band,” he once wrote, “I do not wish to be associated with their charming little records.” What he was more than happy to do was kiss and tell.
Everybody has their favorite Steve Albini diss; mine include his description of the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa (which he produced) as “A patchwork pinch loaf from a band who at their top-dollar best are blandly entertaining college rock.” I also like his bottom line on Bitch Magnet’s “Star Booty” EP: “Listening to this wittle wecord is about the dumbest thing you could do with it, especially if you’re short on dinnerware.” And lovable guy that he was, he described The Breeders’ drummer as looking “quite like an emu, except that her hair is thinner.” This is not a nice thing to say about a woman. Or a man. Or an emu, for that matter.
Albini was no fan of political correctness and his songs with Big Black—a noise rock outfit with an industrial feel thanks to “Roland” the drum machine—were taboo busters, rife with cynically “funny” takes on racism, homophobia, sexism, child sexual abuse, and god knows what else. If a Big Black song didn’t offend your sense of common decency, it was probably not a Big Black song. Outrage was Albini’s métier—it was always a simple matter of saying the next wrong thing. His was envelope-pushing comedy, but while the songs were remorselessly brutal exercises in drill-bit ear surgery, the jokes wore very thin very fast, and I tended to just ignore them.
But Albini made a colossal miscalculation by naming his post-Big Black band—which included two former Scratch Acid alum, David Wm. Sims on bass and Rey Washam on drums—Rapeman, after a Japanese comic book. It was one transgressive step too far, and the band found itself facing protests at shows and mucho negative press. Both Albini and Sims would later express regrets over the name, and not simply because it may have overshadowed the very good music on their sole album, the 1988 studio affair Two Nuns and a Pack Mule. Albini called it a “flippant choice” and in a 2021 tweet said, “A lot of things I said and did from an ignorant position of comfort and privilege are clearly awful and I regret them. It’s nobody’s obligation to overlook that, and I do feel an obligation to redeem myself…” He said even more unsparing things elsewhere, and it’s to his credit.
Two Nuns and a Pack Mule is all dementia, herky-jerky rhythms, rumbling bass, meat-tenderizer drumming, and lacerating razor-wire guitar, and Albini does things he never did with Big Black. Rapeman’s is a less monolithic pile driver-driven sound, which was due in part to the demise of poor Roland and in part to Albini’s increasing interest to textures and more varied rhythms. In short, Rapeman’s songs have a more organic and less industrial feel. And that industrial feel was always what kept this reviewer at arm’s length from Big Black. They were too tight-assed. Pile drivers didn’t swing.
Opener “Steak and Black Onions” is musical assault and battery complete with lots of neat feedback, vicious ax play that could take somebody’s head off, battering ram drums and lots of drive, and about my only complaint is that Albini’s attack on vegetarian preacher types features lyrics I bet he wrote in less than thirty seconds. And aside from a rather lame “Why don’t you snuff it, then/You plant-eating pussy,” they’re eminently forgettable. Michael Gerald of Killdozer would have done justice to the issue and come up with some truly funny putdowns, but Albini is no Michael Gerald.
And the lyrics of follow-up “Monobrow” are similarly disappointing; she has a monobrow, she thanks him for noticing, and he says he rather likes it. I’m paraphrasing. Then he sings, “I saw Chris Johnson with a boner/I saw Todd Trainer singing in German/Scared the shit out of me/And I don’t scare easily.” And that’s it. Todd Trainer would become the drummer of Albini’s post-Rapeman project, Shellac. Chris Johnson may or may not the well-known drummer Chris Johnson. Does it matter?
Fortunately the song’s top notch, once Albini stops making wonderfully awful noises with his guitar and the bass and drums come in and smack you around some. It’s quite impressive, as is Albini’s entertainingly off-putting guitar solo. The two further occasions on which Albini takes the opportunity to more or less stop the music to make more horrible noises on his guitar just prove that he really does love to annoy people. It’s charming, in a louche way. I’ll bet you any money he was that kid in third grade who loved to torture his classmates by doing the chalk on chalkboard bit.
“Up Beat” proceeds at hardcore speed; vocally Albini reminds me of the Cows’ Shannon Selberg. Wish the song didn’t have these rote-feeling slowdowns, but I love it when Sims’ bass comes to the forefront and throbs like the proverbial muscle of love. Lyrically Albini comes through—he comes off really tough, says ugly things about you and threatens to kick your ass, but in the end he confesses he’s just a wimp:
“If I had six inches and maybe fifty pounds
Maybe if I had Kung Fu training
You’d really have to watch your ass
I…I suppose, I suppose I’m not too threatening
Presently but…
Wait ’til I start Nautilus.”
Albini plays fractured metal guitar over throbbing bass and lots of drum clamor on “Coition Ignition Mission”—he’s fucked up the tuning or replaced the strings with razor wire or something, or maybe he’s just a boy genius when it comes to finding new and fascinating ways to produce unpleasant sounds on his guitar, but boy is it ugly beautiful. Meanwhile he sounds like he’s shouting from the next town over, and man does everything happen real fast.
“Kim Gordon’s Panties” may or may not be a Sonic Youth putdown—lyrically it’s tough to tell WHAT it is. Albini’s visiting a friend in Milwaukee, Thurston Moore stops by and he’s out of his mind, and somebody says, “Hey I’m a red blooded man…/I’d hang that woman’s panties/From his car aerial/Hate to see a friend go queer/Knowing what’s going to waste.” It features a long and very fucked-up guitar intro, then Albini and some unknown somebody else sing together (song credits are silent on the matter…. maybe it’s Thurston himself, wouldn’t that be funny?) and I wish I could say I like it but it sounds like Fugazi, and that’s always a terrible thing.
“Hated Chinee” opens with some dissonant guitar wank and a cry of “Shit!” before getting down to the business of being “amusingly” racist. Making fun of minorities has a long and hallowed (right) tradition in punk music, but you would have thought that by 1988 even the densest punk with a modicum of intelligence would have figured the joke had grown stale. The song is a mid-tempo, keep-you-off-balance frazzle fest and if you can ignore the lyrics and simply direct your attention to the terrible ordeal Steve’s subjecting his guitar to it’s as much fun as flushing an M-80 down a toilet.
“Marmoset” is an up-tempo example of feral noise funk with some spastic guitar work gratis Albini—quite impressive, even if the lyrics are a complete wash. “Radar Love Lizard” is a chaotically loose adaptation (you can kinda hear it in there) of the Golden Earring classic taken at quadruple time. The bass is in your face, while Albini (who’s a little lizard!) spiels free style, tossing off stream of consciousness hoo-hah along the lines of “Gonna get a little place/Gonna keep it real warm/Eat only raw meat/Never hear the Beastie Boys again.” It’s nasty, brutish, and relatively short, this one, and Albini sure has a big voice for such a little twerp. I deem it worthy.
Rapeman does ZZ Top proud on their cover of “Just Got Paid.” Funk it up real good, they do. The song has momentum coming out its faux Texas wazoo, with Albini playing remorseless guitar with some nice feedback and lotsa sizzling distortion. There’s some stop/start media res which annoys me a bit, but I love the way Albini and Sims engage in some vocal parrying and join together to sing that “Just got paid today.”
“Trouser Minnow” has this stop/start dub thing going on and also reminds me a bit of Fugazi, too bad. But the drumming is John Bonham brutal and I like the way Albini talks his way through it, punctuating his oration with lots of third-rail guitar. The lyrics are ambiguous; Albini’s a woman who’s constantly getting drunk and finding herself in bed with men with “little dicks,” and the question of does she or does she not want it (“They take advantage of me/I want all men to use me/For their only satisfaction”) is, as is always the case when it comes to victimization, a troubling one. Albini told an interviewer he based it on a real conversation with a real live woman, and I’m not sure what that says except that sex is confusion and confusion is often the result of trauma and the suspicion that Albini is doing nothing but unnecessarily muddy the waters is a valid one.
Rapeman was a great example of a smartass who liked to play at the transgressive margins shooting himself in the dick. But the music’s great—a frontal assault on the ears (and frontal lobes) of listeners who, unless they’re noise rock fans whose ears’ finer edges were sandpapered off by awful sounds years ago—likely as not will emerge from the experience traumatized. Two Nuns and a Pack Mule is more than just a worthy follow-up to the music of Big Black. It’s one of The Mighty Albini’s finest hours.
But that name, man. Even the guy who came up with the name Anal Cunt had more sense. Albini was one immature adult at the time, and like I say, a more mature Albini never sought to downplay the ugliness of a band name he likened to a “bad tattoo.” Of course you can always have a bad tattoo removed, and most will never know you ever had it. Rapeman was a tattoo Albini couldn’t have removed, and to his credit he didn’t want it removed. It’s always nice to run across a super-talented dick who grows a conscience. Some super-talented dicks never do. They just stay dicks for the duration of their natural lives.
As for that album title, it sounds like the set-up of an obscene joke I’d really love to hear. None of us ever grows up completely. Which is a good thing. Go full adult and you’re a guaranteed bore.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B+
