Steve Albini: 17 Essential Albums

With Big Black, Steve Albini strove to make the angriest, scariest sounds you’ve ever heard. He scraped a metal pick against his guitar strings to give his atmospheric riffing extra crackle, he used a drum machine to make the music robotically rigid, and he sang about the most disgusting things you could think of. Atomizer, the band’s first full-length, opens with a song about child abuse (“Jordan, Minnesota”) and catches fire with “Kerosene,” a song with a dynamite guitar riff about people feeling so bored they’d set each other on fire. It’s Albini at his most vitriolic — their follow-up EP, Headache, even bore a sticker warning fans it wasn’t as good as Atomizer — and the band would last only one more album, 1987’s Songs About Fucking, before breaking up. That album’s “Bad Penny” and “Colombian Necktie” contain some of his and guitarist Santiago Durango’s gnarliest guitar playing, foregrounding the next 20 years of noise rock. —K.G.

After Big Black, Albini — whose legacy as an edgelord is arguably just as vital as his contributions to music — became obsessed with a Japanese manga about a superhero who commits sexual assaults. “I can’t defend that name, especially to someone who has a personal history that makes them particularly sensitive to it … but I’m also not willing to apologize for it,” Albini told Rolling Stone in 2014. If you can get past the name, the music on Two Nuns and a Pack Mule and their Budd EP gives the eardrum abuse of Big Black a poppy twist, setting the table musically for the grunge explosion three years later. On “Monobrow,” Albini plays an unpredictably syncopated riff and sings the innocuous “She said, ‘Sweet of you to notice’/He said, ‘I kinda like it myself.'” He even shouts out Todd Trainer, the drummer of his next band, Shellac, on the song. And “Just Got Paid” is like funk from hell. It’s noise rock you can dance to — you just gotta want to, if you can forgive the name. —K.G.

The album where Albini and the little band out of Boston pretty much invented the alt-rock sound of the Nineties. The combination of the Pixies’ astonishing songcraft, sidelong humor, quiet-loud dynamics, and playfully twisted sensibility was the perfect match for Albini’s verite recording philosophy. It’s a record that breaks your body and leaves you smiling, from the opening bash of “Bone Machine” to the Kim Deal masterpiece “Gigantic” to the swaying sing-along “Where Is My Mind.” “A patchwork pinch loaf from a band who at their top dollar best are blandly entertaining college rock,” Albini wrote. They pinched out a record that changed the world. —J.D.

When Albini produced the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa, Black Francis did the vast majority of the creative work, writing and singing practically every song himself. But Pixies bassist Kim Deal was the one who co-wrote and sang lead on “Gigantic,” one of the most memorable tracks on the album. Two years later, Albini was given the chance to share more of Deal’s brilliance with the world when he produced the debut record from her new band, the Breeders. “Some producers really become a fifth member of the band,” Deal said in 1993. “And they really, like, agonize over every decision. But what we had was … we’d go, ‘Do you like this guitar sound, or this guitar sound?’ And he’d go, ‘I don’t give a fuck. It’s not my band! Do whatever the fuck you wanna do. Just tell me when you’re ready, and I’ll put the mikes on.’” This trusting, if not lackadaisical, attitude created one of the pivotal albums of the alt-rock era, and it solidified Kurt Cobain’s decision to work with Albini a few years later. It also created a long friendship between Deal and Albini that continued through the most recent Breeders LP in 2018. “I think [Deal] has an absolutely magical voice,” Albini told Marc Maron in 2015. “I think she is a genius, and she thinks about music in a unique way. I consider myself very close to her in terms of her musical existence. I really admire her, and I’m proud of that association. The Pixies, as a band, they were fine. Whatever.” —A.G.

It was sort of an unexpected pairing. The Leeds, England, band the Wedding Present had become college-radio darlings in the Eighties with the quick-wristed guitar churn and post-Smiths bellyaching of songs like “My Favorite Dress” and “Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft.” But things got taken to a whole new level when they went to Minnesota’s iconic Pachyderm Studio to record with Albini. Seamonsters, from 1991, is a magisterial mix of top-shelf noise-guitar tumult and frontman David Gedge’s sad-boy romanticism. Albini tended to work with tough American bands, and hearing him engineering an LP from a band of twee U.K. sweeties was fun, at once hard-hitting and open-hearted, with real tension between the band and the sound. —J.D.

The Jesus Lizard had a nearly symbiotic relationship with Albini, almost as if the band was born for his specific way of making records. In his classic “Eyewitness Record Reviews” column, Albini wrote that he recorded the Jesus Lizard’s Pure EP for “about a buck.” “The only one of their three records that is not absolutely stellar,” he added. And indeed, when it came time to record their 1991 album, Goat, he and the band created what might be the quintessential Albini recording. Duane Denison sounds like he’s torturing his guitar as David Yow barks his lyrics into the abyss, and the drum sound is the Platonic ideal of spacious and punishing. Songs like “Mouth Breather” and “Nub” and “Seasick” perfect the kind of thuggish Midwestern brutalism that’d make the Jesus Lizard one of the most intense rock bands of the early Nineties. —J.D.

The beloved North Carolina band Superchunk were just getting going, with some great singles and a debut LP under their belt. Like everyone in 1991, they were fans of the Albini sound. “We were excited that Steve would do it, and that he had a plan we could afford,” Mac McCaughan recalled years later. “We were intimidated, but we were also used to recording quickly. And we knew he was about capturing a band realistically, which fit with our aesthetic at that point.” The result was their first great album, bracing,  joyous, relentlessly catchy, and brimming with good-natured quarter-life angst — from the opening jolt of “Skip Steps 1 & 3” to anthemic shots like “Seed Toss,” “Cast Iron,” and “Punch Me Harder,” all songs that can still get the people pogoing over 30 years later. —J.D.

In February 1993, Albini was tasked with producing Nirvana’s new album — the follow-up to the massive, genre-defining Nevermind. No pressure. But for a band whose very ethos was to remain as anti-corporate and punk as possible, there was no one better suited for the job than Albini. Kurt Cobain, ever the Pixies superfan, wanted to make his very own Surfer Rosa and escape the mainstream “candy-ass” rock he’d created on Nevermind. The band hunkered down in the woods of rural Minnesota for 14 days, crafting the beautifully unfiltered and uncompromising In Utero.

Albini worked for a flat rate of $100,000 and famously refused royalties, describing the idea of taking points on a guaranteed bestseller as “ethically indefensible.” “I would like to be paid like a plumber: I do the job and you pay me what it’s worth,” he wrote. Albini had the band record live, advising them to avoid any interference with “front office bulletheads.” But ultimately their label, DGC, felt the record was too raw and enlisted R.E.M. producer Scott Litt to remix the singles. Had Cobain had it his way, he would have released two separate records — the complete Albini album as I Hate Myself and Want to Die, followed by the softened Litt remix as Verse Chorus Verse. That didn’t happen, but the Albini tracks on In Utero — “Scentless Apprentice,” “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle,” “Milk It” — remain some of Nirvana’s greatest, as gut-wrenchingly pure as Cobain intended. —A.M.

PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me is a transformative and emotionally leveling listen. It opens with the whispered-to-venomous title track, capturing the unvarnished anguish, fury, and emotional chaos and torture a man can bring in a romantic entanglement, in a way that still devastates 31 years later — and that’s just the first track. The man behind the boards, who often preferred to not be credited and disliked being called a producer, understood the intensity of Harvey’s material, using unsettling loud-soft-loud dynamics that mirrored Polly Jean’s singular voice and raw lyrical themes. The album was recorded quickly with her and the band all together at the same time, giving it an immediacy and live sound; while Albini’s approach drew criticism on its release, PJ Harvey was pleased with it. “I knew I wanted to work with Steve Albini from listening to Pixies records, and hearing the sounds he was getting, which were unlike any other sounds that I’d heard on vinyl,” she told Spin. “I really wanted that very bare, very real sound. I knew that it would suit the songs. It’s like touching real objects or feeling the grain of wood. That’s what his sound is like to me. It’s very tangible. You can almost feel the room.” —A.L.

With Shellac, Albini and his bandmates — bassist Bob Weston and drummer Todd Trainer — distilled the noisy aesthetics of Big Black and Rapeman and made them more rock-forward. Albini suddenly was writing riffs with actual grooves on songs like At Action Park‘s “The Admiral,” since he was now playing along with Trainer and not a Roland drum machine. Opener “My Black Ass,” with its hollow riff and gnashed-teeth vocals, became a long-running staple for Shellac concerts, as did “Dog and Pony Show,” which lunged along with Trainer’s drums, and the rumbly, frenzied dystopic collage they called “Crow.” Released at the peak of the alternative boom, At Action Park probably could have been an MTV Buzz Bin favorite if Albini, who was always wary of the major-label music industry, wanted to play the game. Instead, the musicians stayed true to their vision, held down their day jobs, and released great albums like 1000 Hurts (check “Prayer to God”) and Excellent Italian Greyhound. Their sixth album, To All Trains, was set to come out just a week after Albini’s unexpected death. —K.G.

Beginning with Times of Grace in 1999, doom-metal impressionists Neurosis began a long collaboration with Albini, who helped fine-tune their sound. Where the band’s previous album, Through Silver in Blood, swelled with miasmas of noise (and is admittedly the best Neurosis album), Times of Grace benefitted from Albini’s ability to capture the band’s rumbling, bludgeoning guitar riffs in a way that allowed singers Steve Von Till and Scott Kelly to howl to high hell without ever overpowering the music. Plus, the tribal nature of Jason Roeder’s drums and the group’s collective percussion was able to blend with Noah Landis’ samples, making for one heaving metal mess on songs like “The Doorway” and “Under the Surface.” By the time the group tempered its anger somewhat, around 2007’s Given to the Rising, Albini had helped situate all of their instruments in a way that coexisted perfectly in their own space. —K.G.

Albini had a special relationship with the great Chicago guitar band Silkworm. He recorded their albums and had a deep friendship with its members. In 2005, when Silkworm’s excellent drummer Michael Dahlquist died in a car accident, Albini wrote a loving tribute to his fallen buddy: “Michael enjoyed literally everything that ever happened to him,” he wrote. “Everything was a marvel to him — a moment of discovery, of novelty and insight to be celebrated with an openmouthed laugh. I mean everything.” Of the albums Albini and Silkworm did together, 2000’s Lifestyle might be the best, from headlong rocker “Treat the New Guy Right,” to the Crazy Horse sludge-slide of “That’s Entertainment,” to softer moments like the acoustic “Roots,” and a wonderful cover of the Faces’ “Ooh La La.” The band was at a songwriting peak, and you can really hear the empathy the musicians shared with the man who helped them realize their vision. —J.D.

Around the same time Albini was refining Neurosis’ heavy metal into a more manageable sound, he brought out the fullness of Low, a trio of minimalist Minnesotans. Where their previous albums reveled in sparseness and an economy of sound, Albini’s contributions to 1999’s Secret Name and, more impressively, on 2001’s Things We Lost in the Fire, added new depth to the group’s music. “Whitetail” swells and slowly builds, first with singer-guitarist Alan Sparhawk’s voice in front, and then the jittery cymbals of his partner, drummer-singer Mimi Parker, and eventually her voice joining in. Sparhawk’s voice is never overwhelming, even when it’s the spotlighted instrument as on “Dinosaur Act,” and some of the songs, like the Parker-sung “Laser Beam,” sounded downright gentle — a sensibility people don’t generally associate with Albini’s aesthetic. —K.G.

In the early 2000s, Albini’s recording philosophy felt like it came to life yet again, this time in the form of a riotously funny Welsh noise trio. “The great thing about him, and it sounds ridiculous, is the drums sound like drums, bass sounds like bass, guitar sounds like guitar,” Mclusky frontman Andy “Falco” Falkous said. “He gets audio performance from what’s happening live, and it’s perfect for us.” Perfect indeed: Whether Falco was screaming scabrous insults and complaints over a pounding-headache rhythm section on “Lightsaber Cocksucking Blues” and “To Hell With Good Intentions” or slowing down for “Fuck This Band,” Albini made sure the intensity meter stayed dialed up. It’s arguably this century’s most focused distillation of his legacy. —S.V.L.

In 2001, Canadian leftist post-rock agitpunks Godspeed You! Black Emperor decamped to Albini’s Electrical Audio in Chicago to record what remains one of their most divisive, yet crucial records. Gone were the field recordings of their first two albums, with the group’s label describing it at the time as “raw, angry, dissonant, epic instrumental rock.” (Many of those adjectives could also be applied to Albini’s own oeuvre.) The targets were always ambitious and lofty, if cryptically defined: “U.X.O. is unexploded ordnance is landmines is cluster bombs,” they wrote. “Yanqui is post-colonial imperialism is international police state is multinational corporate oligarchy. Godspeed You! Black Emperor is complicit is guilty is resisting.” But in Albini, they found a kindred spirit for crescendoing, intense music that, with its militaristic drumming and wall of guitars, was emotionally brutal and disquietingly devastating. Godspeed fans remain sharply divided on Yanqui’s place in the band’s catalog, but it further highlighted Albini’s singular gift in wringing ferocious emotion from all places. —J.N.

The incandescent beauty of Joanna Newsom’s second studio album — five epic-length poem-songs, each one teeming with surreal imagery and wild emotion — could have been crushed by the wrong engineer. Albini’s radical simplicity was exactly what the songs needed, spotlighting Newsom’s voice and harp for an album that sounded out of time upon its release and remains unique in her or anyone else’s catalog. “I was in this small room with Steve Albini and nobody else, and I was playing the songs exactly as they are, and it was a pretty intense time,” Newsom recalled in an interview shortly after the album’s release. “I had it candlelit, in the dark with just candles and conjuring up these pretty insane moments that I had been experiencing…. There’s something about the way Steve recorded me and the environment in which it was done. There was a sense of closeness and spontaneity, and I felt extremely emotionally on edge, and I went through these vocal takes. I was just wrecked afterwards because it was such an emotional experience.” (She’d later call him “pretty much the best producer in the world,” and she reunited with him to record 2015’s Divers.) —S.V.L. 

Cleveland rockers Cloud Nothings got their start making cute, low-fi noise-pop, but with their 2012 album, Attack on Memory, they married singer-guitarist’s Dylan Baldi’s speedy, nervy tunes to a big-boned, roomy Albini sound and came out with a perfectly catchy, contusive little banger of a record. Baldi later said that Albini spent a lot of the session playing poker on his computer, but the hands-off approach worked wonders. Just check the power-pop thunder of “Fall In” and “Stay Useless” and the sublime drum assault of “Separation.” The band got back together with Albini in 2020 for another fine album, The Black Hole Understands. —J.D.