Five bands that Steve Albini hated
If you wanted a fiery opinion on just about anything, Steve Albini was often a good source to go to. The legendary musician and engineer started his career as a journalist before making the leap to music full-time, and if you happened to pick up some of his earliest thoughts in Chicago zines, you might be surprised by how much vitriol and contempt Albini could stuff into a single coherent thought.
“Steve’s reputation is that he’s a cynical prick,” Dave Grohl observed in the first episode of the Foo Fighters docuseries Sonic Highways. “He’s brilliant, so he kind of affords that reputation of being a cynical prick.” It’s hard to argue against his track record: Big Black, Pixies, The Breeders, Jawbreaker, P.J. Harvey and Nirvana, just to name a few. Albini’s approach to music is incredibly noble, too: he’ll record anyone that can pay the bill at his Electrical Audio studio, and he never takes “points” that most producers get on albums. He insists on getting paid for his time and nothing else.
With time and age comes a certain mellowing on the mind, and Albini is not immune. “I’m overdue for a conversation about my role in inspiring ‘edgelord’ shit,” Albini tweeted in 2021, specifically with regards to naming his former band Rapeman. “Believe me, I’ve met my share of punishers at gigs and I sympathize with anybody who isn’t me but still had to suffer them.” With that being said, Albini’s opinions continue to be as razor-sharp as ever.
Albini has famously groused about the state of modern music journalism, describing it as “copy paste bullshit” that is “profoundly lazy” that “[steals] material from elsewhere on the internet”. That means the producer would probably not be a fan of this particular article, but as we shall see, being caught in Albini’s crosshairs is a proud tradition that stretches back decades.
No one is immune from Albini’s ire – not former collaborators, not friends, and especially not famous individuals.
Five bands legendary producer Steve Albini hated:
The Smashing Pumpkins
One of Albini’s most notorious takedowns came in the form of an open letter to rock journalist Bill Wyman (not the former Rolling Stones bassist) in 1994. At the time, Chicago was experiencing a renaissance in mainstream alternative rock, but Albini had a bone to pick with three of the most popular artists that were spearheading the movement: Liz Phair, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Urge Overkill.
With the letter titled ‘Three Pandering Sluts and Their Music-Press Stooge’, Albini leaves little to the imagination as he makes a tactical strike against all three artists by comparing them to other artists. For Billy Corgan and company, Albini says that “The Smashing Pumpkins are REO Speedwagon (stylistically appropriate for the current college party scene, but ultimately insignificant).”
Urge Overkill
In the same open letter published in The Chicago Reader, Albini also took aim at local alt-rockers Urge Overkill, a band best known for their cover of Neil Diamond’s ‘Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon’ that appeared in Pulp Fiction. As we’ll see, any kind of selling out doesn’t exactly sit well with Albini, and Urge Overkill made the mistake of trying to ride the then-current wave to alt-rock glory.
Albini had actually had a close relationship with Urge Overkill in the late 1980s, rooming with the band and engineering their debut album, Jesus Urge Superstar. However, by the mid-1990s, Albini believed that the band had become akin to “Oingo Boingo (Weiners in suits playing frat party rock, trying to tap a goofy trend that doesn’t even exist).”
Sonic Youth
As his harsh words against Urge Overkill proved, Albini is fine with holding his former friends accountable for perceived transgressions. Noise rock pioneers Sonic Youth had toured with Albini in the late 1980s, but in a 2010 GQ interview, Albini wasn’t kind to the band. “[A] lot of the things they were involved with as part of the mainstream were distasteful to me. And a lot of the things that happened as a direct result of their association with the mainstream music industry gave credibility to some of the nonsense notions that hover around the star-making machinery. A lot of that stuff was offensive to me and I saw it as a sellout and a corruption of a perfectly valid, well-oiled music scene.”
“Sonic Youth chose to abandon it in order to become a modestly successful mainstream band — as opposed to being a quite successful independent band that could have used their resources and influence to extend that end of the culture,” Albini added. “They chose to join the mainstream culture and become a foot soldier for that culture’s encroachment into my neck of the woods by acting as scouts. I thought it was crass and I thought it reflected poorly on them. I still consider them friends and their music has its own integrity, but that kind of behavior — I can’t say that I think it’s not embarrassing for them. I think they should be embarrassed about it.” Ouch.
Pixies
When Steve Albini dies, his production work on the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa will be right up there with his work on Nirvana’s In Utero at the top line of his obituary. Surfer Rosa was the moment where Albini’s legend started to gain serious momentum, but while talking with the Forced Exposure zine in 1991, he had some harsh words for both the band and the album.
Calling Surfer Rosa “a patchwork pinch loaf from a band who at their top dollar best are blandly entertaining college rock,” Albini tore into the Pixies. “Their willingness to be ‘guided’ by their manager, their record company and their producers is unparalleled. Never have I seen four cows more anxious to be led around by their nose rings.”
He later expressed regret over those comments, explaining in the 2005 book Fool the World: The Oral History of a Band Called Pixies that “I don’t think that I regarded the band as significantly as I should have.”
Steely Dan
Albini’s thorny rhetoric might have softened in more recent years, but there are still plenty of hot takes that he can unleash at a moment’s notice. Case in point: his tirade against Steely Dan in early 2023. “I will always be the kind of punk that shits on Steely Dan,” Albini tweeted. “Christ, the amount of human effort wasted to sound like an SNL band warm up”.
Calling their music as being “made solely for the purpose of letting the wedding band stretch out a little,” Albini took issue with Walter Becker and Donald Fagen’s notorious pursuit of perfection. “Two types of perfectionist: One will prepare, revise and rehearse carefully, with intent, honing an idea to a keen edge, ready to cut the cloth of execution,” Albini said. “The other makes other people responsible by saying, ‘do it again,’ until by chance they are satisfied, then take credit.”
