Big Black: Songs About F***ing (2018 remaster) [TOUCH & GO]

Why you'll love it

This 2018 remaster gives Touch & Go's 1987 noise-rock landmark a fresh cut. Steve Albini called it the Big Black album he was most satisfied with, and it covers Kraftwerk's "The Model" with a straight face and a drum machine.

This edition

• Remastered in 2018

About the album

Most bands break up after the last album. Big Black decided to split before they made it, partly because guitarist Santiago Durango was off to law school and partly because they wanted to quit at what they felt was a creative peak. Steve Albini, Durango and bassist Dave Riley went into the studio knowing it was the final word.

The Happy Otter side was cut at Southern Studios in Wood Green, London, with John Loder; the Sad Otter side was recorded back home in Chicago. Albini was proudest of the first, which the band banged out quickly and cheaply. "The Power of Independent Trucking" and "Bad Penny" open with serrated guitars over a pounding machine beat, "The Model" turns Kraftwerk's cool synth-pop into something with teeth, and "Kasimir S. Pulaski Day" and "Pavement Saw" keep the pressure on.

Writer Andrew Earles called it the heaviest, hardest-rocking entry in the band's catalogue, and its blueprint runs through decades of post-hardcore and noise rock. Shops in 1987 often blanked the title out in their displays; we've gone with asterisks, which is the modern equivalent of a polite cough.

Also at Kops: more Big Black on vinyl · browse Punk

Tracklist

Listen

On Touch & Go (cat# T&G LP #24), a reissue of the 1987 album.