MattA75's Full Review: Songs About Fucking (Happy Otter/Sad Otter) by Big...
This is part of Xiphoid's write off, designed to prove the hypocrisy of Epinions' own censoring device, that technically has products in it that reviewing them alone would seem to violate TOS. I also have no patience in figuring out how to code it so that the swear words appear. Blame the album for that, not me please. =)
When you mention the name Steve Albini to a knowledgeable music fan, the first thing that might come to mind is his work as a producer, especially as he was the man Kurt Cobain sought to make Nirvana's In Utero album unlistenable. He didn't exactly succeed on that count, at least not 100%. However, back in the early to mid 80s, Albini was in a band of his own, called Big Black. I'm not at all familiar with this band, in fact, I took a chance on this album, titled Songs About F*cking, specifically for this write off. Quite frankly, Big Black does nothing for me.
They are, at best, Sonic Youth clones with about 25% of the talent. At worst, they make noise and hope to appeal to the lowest denominator of punk fan. My head's still pounding from the headache this disc gave me.
People told me that this band had some great lyrics. I wouldn't know since I couldn't figure any of them out. Or maybe it was just the awful racket they were making that distracted me from really caring what the hell they were saying in the first place.
Basically, Big Black takes punk, industrial, metal, and rock and melds it all into one big low fi stew that sounds like the bastard step-parents of Slipknot and Mushroomhead...in other words, thanks a lot.
I'd describe the songs in great detail, but well, there isn't much more detail I can go into. It's really just low fi noise done with no sense of the right way to pull it off, you know, the way Sonic Youth was able to for the first 20 years of their career.
The drums pound through your head like a jackhammer, the guitars squeal with more asinine noise than you could ever imagine, and the vocals are just as bad. There's nothing worse than Kasimir S. Pulaski Day, which just made me want to shut the album off even more than the 8 songs that preceded it did. But I soldiered on, listening to all 14 tracks total. Never ever again I tell you, ever.
This was named one of the most essential punk albums by Spin magazine last year, and I don't understand why. It's a terrible album that no one should subject themselves to. I wish I could go into more detail, but if I did, I'd have an even larger headache, and no review would be written at all. If you want some decent industrial music, try early Nine Inch Nails. If you want some decent early angry punk, try anything but this. And if you just want some low fi, artful, "beautiful noise," try the previously mentioned Sonic Youth. But stay the hell away from Big Black.
Tracklisting:
The Power of Independent Trucking
The Model
Bad Penny
L Dopa
Precious Thing
Colombian Necktie
Kitty Empire
Ergot
Kasimir S Pulaski Day
Fish Fry
Pavement Saw
Tiny King of the Jews
Bombastic Intro
He's a Wh*re
Once again, this was part of the lovely Xiphoid's You Can't Say That on Epinions Write Off, and while this entry was awful, the others aren't. The other contributors are:Aerocat - alex_isit - badkittyM - Beckish - Freak369 - imokliel - James23 - jankp - jeff_wilder78 - JennJoy - jkkelley - kris-kochanski - MattA75 - mattygroves - pearl-drum-man - Petra - pffrdfdus7 - shilmafone - Wokelstein - xiphoid
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