Ever notice how rock bands tend to keep things interesting for themselves by pointlessly dragging out their songs and introducing awkward conceptual threads? Also, how many bands veil their subject matter in euphemisms to avoid being taken literally, to stay safe, or -- better yet -- to be "mysterious?"
Big Black's final LP does the diametric opposite of both. Not only do the 14 songs here whip by with only one exceeding the three-minute mark, but each one is incisive enough to render a razor as effective as a butter knife. In sum: yowl, ching, thump-thump-screech. And, how could a title be more direct? The only band that had courage enough to be this direct was
Spinal Tap, and that was for a song, not an album title.
Songs About Fucking brought about a definite sharpening of the band's sound.
Steve Albini's mangled screaming is at its most bileful, his and
Santiago Durango's guitars don't meander, and the rhythm section of
Dave Riley and Roland is more taut than at any point prior. Ugly characters line up in the songs like early arrivals at a monster truck rally. Most significantly, there's the murderer in "Fish Fry"; who else but
Steve Albini could paint the picture of a man hosing out his truck after chucking a dead body from it into a nearby pond? The band left with more of a kling klang than a bang, bowing out with a reverent cover of
Kraftwerk's "The Model." [The CD version adds the B-side of "The Model," a swell cover of
Cheap Trick's "He's a Whore."]