Who's Simon Defending Now?: Big Black

A brick of fireworks explodes onstage.

A scrawny, bespectacled nerd walks on stage, with two lumbering goons in tow. They wear their guitars with strange straps around their hips, instead of the standard shoulder ones.

There is no drummer.

The nerd walks toward the microphone.

“1… 2… 1, 2, FUCK YOU!”

The next three minutes are the worst three minutes of your life. You’re plunged into a lacerating flood of guitar distortion and slamming bass. There may be no drummer, but there’s a brutal drumbeat coming from somewhere, hammering itself into your head with inhuman precision. The musicians are staggering around the stage, spitting, screaming, bleeding. Is this Hell, you ask?

No, this is Big Black. And they probably hate you.

In terms of music that challenges you, there simply are no other bands that can touch Big Black. Driven by Steve Albini, a crazed, bitter lunatic hailing from the vast nothingness of Missoula, Montana, they tore rock audiences apart for five brief years in the 80s. With guitarist Santiago Durango and bassist Dave Riley providing the necessary muscle (not to mention “Roland”, the drum machine which was always treated as a full band member), they openly provoked audiences who had grown accustomed to the formulaic nature of American punk bands. 80s underground rock in America meant the rigid viewpoints of hardcore punk or the loose jangle of R.E.M. and college rock. Big Black didn’t try for either.

To call Big Black “abrasive” or “offensive” doesn’t even begin to do them justice. The Sex Pistols were “abrasive,” but they still played recognizable chords and blues progressions. Modern rap can be “offensive,” but today’s rappers don’t talk about child molestation and slaughterhouses. Such things are impossibly bad taste, right? If they are, it didn’t keep Big Black from singing about them. Against a backdrop of intolerable noise, there were no subjects off-limits for Big Black.

The sound of Big Black is certainly recognizable. Using aluminum guitars and playing with copper guitar picks that were clipped in half, the guitar sound is best described as “ungodly metallic screeching.” Instead of riffs, Albini and Durango created sounds resembling sheet metal being ripped apart. However, the cacophony was carefully controlled. Especially since their drummer was, in fact, a machine, the precision in Big Black’s music is amazing. Unlike the flabby distortion of heavy metal, Big Black’s sound is pure punk, honed down to its leanest, sharpest edge. This is efficient, carefully executed music intended to grab you and never let you go.

The lyrics are certainly attention-grabbing as well. Particularly on their debut album, 1986’s Atomizer, their songs dealt with every taboo topic they could think of. Songs about police corruption and post-traumatic stress disorder target large social problems, while others are told from the perspective of alcoholics or a wife-beating husband. Most of Albini’s lyrics are in this first-person perspective, which is where most of their offensiveness comes from. We’re not supposed to relate with these types of misanthropic characters, but Albini’s songs force us into their shoes through the lyrics. Perhaps most shocking of all is “Jordan, Minnesota”, which is based on a true account of a city-wide child molestation ring. A song told from the perspective of an abused child would be controversial enough, but Albini takes the role of the molester. By the time he starts moaning and screaming, saying “come here and do as you’re told,” you understand just how horrific and tasteless this story is.

But it’s also true and this is where Big Black gets complicated. It’s easy to dismiss them as a bunch of horrible, offensive sociopaths, but, by doing so, you’re only looking at the surface of the music. Beneath the wall of noise and button-pushing words are some of the most pointed satires and black comedy in history. Big Black confront issues like child molestation head on, whereas most other bands won’t even go near such subjects. In the world of Big Black, to avoid something is to act like it doesn’t exist. The problems Albini writes about are all real. A song like “Bazooka Joe”, featuring a PTSD Vietnam vet, deals with a real problem in 1980s America. Big Black don’t dress these issues up at all, which is why they offend so many people, but if you take a moment to look at Albini’s word choice and phrasing, it’s clear that their songs aren’t meant to be taken literally. In the middle of “Bad Penny”, the song pauses so Albini can deliver this monologue:

I think I fucked your girlfriend once
Maybe twice, I don’t remember
Then I fucked all your friends’ girlfriends
Now they hate you

Maybe I’m just as twisted and warped as Albini, but I can’t help but laugh when I hear that. Big Black’s music and lyrics are so extreme that they simply can’t be taken at face-value. The point is that they offend. You’re supposed to have a strong reaction. Besides, above all, their songs are theatric. Albini writes character sketches, putting himself (and the listener) into the shoes of the most undesirable elements of humanity, in order to shine the light on subjects people would rather just ignore. There’s no excuse for that kind of ignorance, however, and Big Black ensure that nobody gets away with it.

Ticket To Read

Title: The Beatles: The Biography
Author: Bob Spitz
Year: 2005

I gotta be honest here. I've never been much of a Beatles fan.

Ok, now that those words have sunk in and everyone’s sharpening their axes in order to lop my head off, let me explain. Let’s imagine, just for a moment, that you didn’t grow up listening to the Beatles. What if you didn’t have parents who played Rubber Soul all the time? What if, in fact, your only early life exposure to the Beatles was a little VHS copy of Yellow Submarine? Well, welcome to my wonderful, Beatle-less childhood. It wasn’t until I really started getting into music that I really encountered the Beatles. Without all those fuzzy, early adolescent memories attached to their music, they just don’t do much for me.

This is where Bob Spitz’s book comes in handy. An absolutely intimidating tome of Beatles lore, clocking in well over 900 pages, it provides a fantastic background for one of the most written-about bands in history. Although it spends far too much time tracing the family histories of anyone even closely related to the band, the sheer scope of information being offered is incredible. You also get a very strong sense of each Beatle over the course of the book. At least in my mind, I ended up annoyed at Paul and filled with empathy for George. I also learned that John Lennon was a huge asshole. These are the kinds of important facts you can learn from this book.

I’m still not a raving Beatles fanatic. They’re fine, plenty of good songs, but none that have really carved out their own special place in my heart. However, after reading this book, which provided some crucial context for their music, I find I can listen to their records and enjoy them much more. Knowing the personal circumstances and emotions that went into the songs gives you another way to look at them. Despite its length, this is an excellent musical reference book and probably the most definitive version of the Beatles story in print.

PS: I apologize for the horrific pun that I used for the title of this post. It was too tempting.

Out Of The Way, Coldplay...

Artist: U2

Album: No Line On The Horizon

Year: 2009

Grade: 3.5 pretzels

What with Bono’s intense activism and soapbox preaching in recent years, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to remember why we listen to anything he has to say. But there was a time, not so long ago, that he was just a rock star, not a spokesman for world peace. Bono as a musician tends to get eclipsed by Bono the Nobel Peace Prize nominee. It’s about time a new album returned Bono (not to mention the three poor guys in U2 not named Bono) to his rightful place as one of the biggest rock gods of the past thirty years.

Now, is No Line On The Horizon that album? That’s a complicated question. U2 have shifted around a lot since the 80s, with each new incarnation winning critical applauds and devoted fans. However, U2 fans can’t always agree on what they want from their albums. Some want a return to the downbeat, mercurial guitar riffing of their earliest material. Some want the epic, widescreen drama of The Joshua Tree or 2004’s Grammy smash, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. A mercifully select few want more of whatever the hell U2 recorded in the mid-90s. Everyone wants something different from U2.

No Line On The Horizon sounds like it knows that, since they dabble in (roughly) eighty million styles over the course of its eleven tracks. Fans of the early stuff get the title track and “Fez – Being Born”. Fans of solid, faux-Zeppelin riffage get “Stand Up Comedy” and “Get On Your Boots”. “Magnificent” is aimed solidly at everyone who ever bought The Joshua Tree. And those nutjobs who want the 90s stuff? Well…let’s just be glad U2 ignored them this time around. A few crazy fans notwithstanding, the album is a grab bag of everything people want from U2, carefully crafted to appeal to the vast ranks of U2 fans across the world. Is this a bit manipulative? Yes. Does it work? Absolutely.

On this album, U2 sound excited for the first time in a decade. Not unlike R.E.M.’s Accelerate last year, this album shows an ancient dinosaur band of the 80s feeling artistically reinvigorated by current events. No matter how many Grammys it ran away with, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb sounded flat and snooze-worthy once you got over the handful of classic singles. No Line On The Horizon starts strong and finishes strong, only losing its momentum on two over-long tracks near the beginning. There’s an interesting Middle Eastern vibe running through the album, probably thanks to their choice of recording in Morocco. The trifecta of superhuman producers U2 has worked with over the years (Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite) were all present on this record, making this seem even more like a greatest hits reunion. When the album gets all the cylinders firing (“Breathe”, “Magnificent”), the results can go toe to toe with the very best U2 has recorded.

The album isn’t perfect (I’m looking at you, Rolling Stone magazine, with your five-star review). The aforementioned long tracks pull the album through molasses when it should be soaring above everything else. Strangely, the lead single, “Get On Your Boots”, seems like one of the weakest tracks on the album. Bono’s lyricism is as awkward as it’s always been, favoring poetic-but-meaningless phrases like “my pulse is fine when I’m running down the road.” But hearing U2 sound alive and loud is worth it. No Line On The Horizon is a consolidation of the band’s greatest strengths, culminating in their strongest album in twenty years.

The State Of The Pretzel Logic: February

Hey everyone. Pretzel Logic’s second month is now in the books. I don’t have anything too exciting to report for now. March will have more of the same, with a Who’s Simon Defending Now? on Tuesday. I’ve decided that the monthly feature will take up the last full week of every month from now on, meaning the 23rd through the 27th for March.

As for album reviews, there are none I want to change at this time.

Also, upon request, here are the albums I’m currently planning on reviewing for next month: Chris Cornell, Neko Case, U2, Handsome Furs, Peter Bjorn & John, Mastodon, MF Doom (recently renamed just DOOM), Swan Lake and PJ Harvey & John Parish. This list will probably expand as more new albums come to my attention, but there’s a 99% chance all these will be written about during March.

Thanks to everyone who’s been reading!

Breakup Albums, Pt. 5: Life's Just Not Fair

Artist: Of Montreal

Album: Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?

Year: 2007

Hissing Fauna is probably the most bizarre and confusing breakup album I’ve talked about this week. Much of this comes from the fact that it’s not exactly a true breakup album. Instead, it chronicles a type of “imaginary breakup” in the mind of band leader Kevin Barnes. Although he was certainly going through a rough patch with his wife Nina at the time of recording, Barnes hides a lot of his autobiographical lyrics behind a Ziggy Stardust-like persona, which he dubbed Georgie Fruit. The album’s songs tell the story of a shattering relationship, brought up by the narrator’s mental chemical imbalance, eventually creating a schism, separating the Georgie Fruit persona from Barnes (or so we assume). By using Georgie Fruit as his stand-in, Barnes becomes a fairly unreliable narrator; some details are probably truly inspired by his marital problems but others are complete fiction. However, quibbling about autobiographical details aside, the album succeeds at conjuring up a hyperactive, colorful, schizophrenic representation of the emotions associated with breaking up. The first words spoken on the album are “we just want to emote ‘till we’re dead,” delivered with Barnes’s trademark cheek. The highlights are unrelenting after that, ranging from “Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse”, a glorious send up to being chemically dependent, to “She’s A Rejecter”, which lurches all over the place as the Georgie Fruit ego (or is it Barnes? We don’t know! Ahhh!) lashes out at “the girl that left me bitter.” Strangest of all is the twelve-minute epic “The Past Is A Grotesque Animal”, which sounds like the most personal expression of heartache and frustration on the album. As Barnes explains it, it’s during this song that he is transformed into Georgie and, listening to the song, you can hear the story being told. “We want our movie to be beautiful, not realistic,” is his appraisal of the relationship as a whole. Whether this is true or not, whether we’re listening to Barnes or Georgie, it’s a fantastic song about the problems that tear relationships apart.

Artist: Kanye West

Album: 808s And Heartbreak

Year: 2008

In 2006, I saw Kanye live in Seattle. This was a year after Late Registration came out and he was on top of the fucking world. He was so impossibly confident, swaggering around and soaking in the attention, that he seemed almost unbearably egotistic. He seemed totally untouchable. Fast forward to the 2008 Grammy Awards. His mother Donda had just died from complications surrounding plastic surgery. He’d been plagued with unrelenting media attention which blew everything he said (most of which were, admittedly, crazy) way out of proportion. Here he was, performing two songs at the Grammys and his transformation on stage was terrifying. Instead of the buoyant confidence I saw two years earlier, he was intense and jerky, channeling all his energy into the floor with a vicious stomp. He sneered the lyrics at the crowd, before abruptly changing moods for a spectral version of “Mama” in tribute. He was a completely different creature. When 808s came out at the end of that year, everyone seemed surprised by the shift in artistic direction, but I feel anyone who had really noticed the ways Kanye had changed over the years saw it coming. On 808s, he’s also reeling from a broken engagement and separation from fiancée Alexis Phifer, which creates two different levels of broken love: a romantic one and a filial one. The music is ghostly and minimal, favoring deep bass thuds and icy synth lines slicing through the fog of emotions Kanye is surrounding himself with. Kanye dehumanizes his voice with an AutoTune effect, further isolating himself in a cocoon of loneliness. The bitterness towards Alexis shows in tracks like “Heartless”, while the loss of his mother can be heard in the resigned weariness of “Street Lights” or “Coldest Winter”. There are moments of anger on 808s, along with personal sadness and loneliness and all the rest of the usual sentiments on breakup albums, but what comes through the most is grief. 808s is an album of mourning, both for the loss of a relationship and the loss of a mother.