Loud Quiet Loud
Pitchmark 03
Welcome to Pitchmark, a short newsletter about music. I’ll tell you about five songs and give you a link to a Spotify playlist. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. I hope you enjoy it. If you’re wondering how you got this in your inbox it’s because it is technically an issue of Learned. If this doesn’t work for you, you can adjust all your subscription settings here: Unsubscribe. But, if you’re willing to stick around, thank you.
Most producers never attract a following; most producers stay hidden, behind the scenes, working with bands to get the sound just right. Some producers become integral to a band’s creative process, becoming a de facto fifth member. A very few become so identified with a particular sound they define a genre. Steve Albini was one of these.
Beyond his influence on punk, grunge, post-hardcore and all that came after, Albini’s legacy is the sheer length of his career. Although he died a few days ago at just 61, his career spanned close to 40 years. Here are five songs from that career.
Gigantic
There’s a story often attributed to Brian Eno that goes something like, The Velvet Underground only sold 30,000 copies of their first record, but everyone who bought it went and started a band. The same could be said of the Pixies’ first record, Surfer Rosa.
During the recording of this record, the Pixies and Albini came up with the phrase “loud quiet loud” to describe what a typical song should sound like. And while the idea itself was not new, they were the first to make it a formula. Gigantic is no exception.
Bonus Live Acoustic Version from 2005
Rid of Me
PJ Harvey showed up on Mtv’s 120 minutes and exploded my world. In the years since I’ve followed along as she has explored her musical taste and style. In fact, I was never so pleased as when I recently played the Rid of Me album for my grown-up niece and she gave it the thumbs up. Sweet. Good job me.
Anyway, Rid of Me is the song that made Polly Jean famous. When it showed up in the record library at the radio station I worked at, I claimed it for my show and have refused to ever let it go.
Do You Still Hate Me
I missed the boat with Jawbreaker. I never knew who they were until the re-issues of their records started appearing in the mid-20teens. I caught up real fast once I heard a couple of tracks off of 24-Hour Revenge Therapy.
This track, Do You Still Hate Me strikes a particular chord; it’s brash, abrasive, but pleading tone sticks right in my brainstem and makes me sing along. Anyway, I’ve put this song chronologically in the playlist according to when it was recorded.
Dumb
Of all the songs on this playlist, Dumb has got to be the most famous. The version linked above is the acoustic version from Nirvana’s Mtv Unplugged set. As I’m sure I’ve related before, my friends and I taped the special when it first aired and then transferred the sound to audio tape. We then proceeded to cut out the songs and play them as singles in lieu of the actual singles for the next few months until the actual record came out. We felt like we had pulled the wool over the eyes of the man. For a moment anyway.
In interviews, Kurt Cobain said that the song was about people who were content to be dumb but happy. Shortly after the Unplugged set, after Cobain died, this song seemed to be a eulogy written by the man himself, apologizing for all the ways he couldn’t measure up.
Drunken Lullabies
Flogging Molly took Irish folk music, added guitars and drums and made punk rock gold. Their first record, Swagger, popped out of the gate sounding like nothing else on the radio1 before or since. As much as I’ve always been a lyrics-first guy, Flogging Molly hooked me in with a four-on-the-floor stomp and fiddle combo that has yet to release me from its grip.
Their second record, Drunken Lullabies took the energy of their debut, refined it and gave it volume (in the physics sense rather than the audio), including the single of the same name. It’s just a damn good song.
Return to Oz
Normally this playlist is only five songs, but when I saw that Steve Albini had produced Laura Jane Grace’s debut solo record I decided to expand it just to include this song. The thing is, as much as I like what Albini did for a bunch of my favorite bands over the years, the most recent song on this playlist is from 2001. After that, Albini’s work just kind of fell off my radar.
But Laura Jane Grace hit my radar with her band Against Me! in 2014 with Transgender Dysphoria Blues. They’ve since become one of my favorite bands if for no other reason that they are the starkest example possible that punk can be about something.
In my world of music anyway. I have it on good authority that they sounded a lot like every other Irish punk rock band flogging away in a bar somewhere in the old country.