Big Black
The Rich Man's Eight Track Tape
1986
Oh Steve Albini. You're an arrogant twat of epic proportions, your production resume is spotty, and your legions of sycophantic fans are among the worst of any band fandom I've ever dealt with, but somehow I still consider one of your records to be one of the most essential of the 80's. I am talking of course about Atomizer, though the other stuff on here isn't bad either.
What we have here is a collection of songs from Big Black, one of the best and most influential American 80's punk bands and one of the more important figureheads in the noise rock movement. This disc contains most of the first LP, Atomizer, and some EPs and miscellaneous B-sides and comp tracks. Fitting with Albini's M.O. of complaining about digital music recording and storage wherever possible, the sound quality is shit (though I can't really imagine this music having the same impact if it were polished and crisp), there's a track missing from Atomizer, and there are some smug little messages Albini added around the packaging regarding his somewhat off-base prediction about the CD format - I guess as his way of reconciling the fact that the label forced him to put this on CD in the first place.
Atomizer makes up some of the best... whatever the hell you'd most accurately call Big Black, it seems the jury is still out on that for some people... ever recorded. It's intense, angry, misanthropic, and puts you right there. Listening to "Jordan, Minnesota" or "Kerosene" or "Bad Houses" lets me vividly imagine a bored, resentful existence as a miserable slacker with a grudge against everyone, pretending for a moment I'm not already kinda close to that. They offer the very best example of Albini's violently bitter lyricism and expulsion of those thoughts, the very best example of the band's thick, hanging atmosphere of tension and demented screeching, roaring, exploding guitar tones that oftentimes make you question whether that's even a guitar you're hearing. One of my favorite things about Big Black is exemplified here - the crossover appeal. Whether your poison is industrial, grunge, indie-rock, hardcore, or whatever, you will probably find something you enjoy.
Some of the songs (especially on the Headache section) kind of droop in quality compared to the first half of the album, enough even to make me lower the score of the compilation as a whole, but they're still decent. My only complaint is that the sound quality, even on CD, is really fucking low, because Steve Albini is a huge gonad about things like that.
That said, buy this album ASAP. It deserves a place on the shelf of everyone who appreciates any of the varying routes of darker alternative music.
RATING: 4/5
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