It is difficult to write about Steve Albini. Partly because most of what’s worth saying about the man was written and committed to the net within hours of his death, and partly because when I try to imagine someone asking me genuine questions about why they should care, my instinctive answer echoes in my skull: “What the fuck do you mean you fucking plebe?”
Of course, I don’t answer that way because I want to believe that the world deserves to be better than it is. But my instinct isn’t entirely unjustified.
So much of what characterized the “underground rock” scene (as it’s understood in most credible rock histories) was this same gap, between what is and what should be. The 60s and 70s were a near-miss encounter between the aesthetic urge for life to be more just and meaningful and the popular movements that might have made it so (see, for example, Jefferson Cowie’s Stayin’ Alive, the late work of Mark Fisher, or more recently Joe Molloy’s Acid Detroit). The best of the 80s and 90s indie scene was the fallout from that encounter’s failure to consummate, of the culture industry regaining its footing as it figured out how to substitute form for substance. It sounded angrier, more cynical, often embracing an absurdism that could edge into the nihilistic. You can say a lot of things about the directionlessness of this rage and disaffection. You cannot say that it was without reason.
Nor can you say that some of these groups didn’t capture the anger incredibly well, even as the 90s spilled into the aughts and beyond. Point to any sterling example of this, and there’s a very good chance that Steve Albini’s fingerprints are on it, as a musician or an audio engineer (as he famously hated being called a producer). PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me, Pixies’ Surfer Rosa, the early output of Jesus Lizard, the Breeders’ Pod, Low’s Things We Lost In the Fire, Jawbreaker’s 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, Godspeed You! Black Empreror’s Yanqui U.X.O., and yes, Nirvana’s In Utero. Albini didn’t see a single penny in royalties from any of these albums, as he refused on principle to charge more than his base rate. He left a fortune on the table with In Utero alone.
“The recording part is the part that matters to me — that I’m making a document that records a piece of our culture, the life’s work of the musicians that are hiring me,” he told The Guardian. “I take that part very seriously. I want the music to outlive all of us.”
In other words, Albini believed in music because he also, through all the cynicism and proto-edgelordism, believed that most of us deserve better, that we deserve to leave something behind. It was why he warned young musicians of the music industry’s predatory nature, why he came to reassess and apologize for his earlier, more deliberately offensive artistic choices, and why he kept beavering away doing what he did.
All of this is preamble to taking up what is likely Albini’s last work as a musician. Plenty has been said — and rightly so — about the radical democratic valence of his work as an audio engineer. If the infamously tyrannical and abusive Phil Spector’s “wall of sound” sought to turn the artists’ work into an obstacle to communion with the listener, then Albini was an absolute opposite in terms of ethics and sonic results. He didn’t produce; that’s the artist’s job. He facilitated, sussing out the best qualities and dynamics of a song and positioning them to speak for themselves.
How does this apply when he was on the other side of the audio booth? There’s been far less said about this, though the respect afforded to both Big Black and Shellac is significant. Whatever we might think about some of the provocative lyrics that Albini would end up shrieking as part of these projects – lyrics which, again, he would come to regret down the line – it’s difficult to ignore the sentiment behind it: it’s not about the language but the behavior, not the symbols of how we live our lives, but how we actually live our lives.
In this regard, both projects can and should be seen not dissimilar from the Jungian shadow. All of the guilty, ugly and shameful acts of daily life brought out into harsh light. As such they are confrontational, dissonant, contemptible toward aesthetic convention, and often as sonically egalitarian as his production work. Take a look at this video from Shellac’s performance at the 2018 Primavera Festival in Barcelona and you can see it clearly.
Naturally, nobody knew that To All Trains would prove to be Albini’s swan song or Shellac’s last album, that we would all be listening to this album in an entirely different light. But here, obviously, we are. The symbolism is annoying.
Particularly because it’s a remarkable album: tight, exacting, stripped down to Shellac’s most basic elements. Opening track “WSOD” is heavy like an inert caustic gas, driven by Bob Weston’s crumpled bassline, Albini’s spiky noodling clawing its way in. There is no clear verse-chorus-verse structure, though the song’s chord patterns don’t deviate much.
As for the lyrics, they are pointedly opaque, sometimes surreal, characteristically never lending themselves to easy interpretation while still being somehow relatable, as if the human voice is merely another instrument wielded by the absurd chaos. “Get that man a medal,” Albini deadpans. Who is this man who deserves this ironic medal? It isn’t clear, but we all know him. Then about thirty seconds of a cinder block rock-out, then it’s done.
That’s more or less the pattern of To All Trains, but this doesn’t mean that it ever gets tedious or boring. Shellac find a groove, they play with it, kick and punch at its edges, leaving it unrecognizable without obliterating it. We may get a bit brutalized along the way ourselves, but that doesn’t mean we can look away. Nor do we really want to.
Even in this mode, there are still high points. “Chick New Wave” is loud and manic, the kind of song you cannot listen to while driving without accidentally speeding (I can personally attest to this). “Wednesday” is a punishing, doomy, thousand-yard stare of a song (also probably the closest any of these tracks’ lyrics come to a discernable plot). “Scabby the Rat” is a punchy, surreal ode to everyone’s favorite giant inflatable rodent labor mascot and his ability to impregnate a whole room.
I ended up listening to the closing track “I Don’t Fear Hell” repeatedly. It’s the longest song on To All Trains – though still relatively brief at under four and a half minutes. Compared to the rest of the album, it takes its time, plodding through jerky riffs disassembling themselves to the point of almost incoherence.
“Something something something when this is over,” drolls Albini. “Leap in my grave like the arms of a lover / If there's a heaven, I hope they're having fun / Cause if there’s a hell, I'm gonna know everyone”
Again, the symbolism is annoying. It also leaves the listener with a very clear understanding of a basic truth. If the music outlives us all, then its survival is going to leave us bruised.
Last month, when every music writer was falling over themselves (including me) to observe the thirtieth anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death, referenced Steve Albini’s notorious essay in The Baffler “The Trouble With Music.” It seemed appropriate at the time not just because of the In Utero connection, but because everything he described in that article played an unmistakable role in Cobain’s mental decline and suicide. Not that Cobain’s immortalization ever acknowledges this. Doing so might be a real risk to the interested parties.
Albini knew these forces better than most. He also knew that none of them had really gone away, they had merely changed form. It’s why for the most part he never changed what he did, just occasionally how he did it.
Until a few days ago, Shellac’s music had, for the most part, stayed gloriously off of Spotify. So had Big Black’s catalog. Neither act needed it. When you make music that good, and aim to get it in the ears of people just as dedicated, there is no need for algorithmic distribution. Some of the more interesting and savvy contemporary artists understand this: Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee is already one of the most talked about indie albums of the year and it’s nowhere near Spotify.
Cranky and elitist? Maybe. But consider for a moment the calculation and deliberation this implies. Most music today is put on streaming as a matter of course. As if to say the only way a song can be heard is to risk its mixture into an already overflowing cacophonous slurry. Hopefully it makes its way to a playlist where its similarities to others in its genre make it more easily consumed, another penny in the pocket of the artist who wrote and recorded it.
Consider the content of To All Trains, the way it demands and defies you to find meaning in it. For music to place itself deliberately outside this distribution model is to demand a certain level of concentration and respect, amplifying the shrieks and dissonance. This isn’t to insist that the medium is the message, but rather to acknowledge that if you sought these sounds out, if you wanted them enough to go beyond the usual channels, then it’s because these words and sounds make that much more sense to you than the slurry of the algorithm’s faves. Almost as if a different and more purposeful conception of music — its composition, its form and content, its place in the world and in our notions of it — is feasible.
Now, both Shellac and Big Black are on Spotify. We certainly can’t begrudge any act for wanting to reach a wider audience at a time like this, and if anyone deserves this credit, it’s Steve Albini. Still, we can’t help but ask if it exacts a price on his ethos, his belief that the best songs can speak for themselves and include us in something as unsparing as he was.
It’s a worthy vision. Whether it has any chance of winning out is another matter entirely. Particularly with so much pressure to drown every sound in pretense and fool’s gold glamor. Still, I’d like to believe there will be many others like Albini in our future. Just like I want to believe the world and our lives deserve to be better than they are.