![]() Because of my intellectual insecurity I was associating arrogance and petulance with a purity of vision – thinking being frank was a mark of authenticity, but it was just an excuse to be rude. At the time, I bristled at the idea of being called a producer so I responded in a peculiar way and went overboard on being negative about those albums, and for Pixies’ Surfer Rosa I went too far. Forced Exposure magazine got me to review albums that I had been credited as producer on. I regret the way I treated the band in print afterwards. ![]() Kim and I are close friends now and she has admitted to me that it was uncomfortable for her to have to answer all these interview questions about this crazy Steve Albini guy doing all these goofy sound effects. Asserting myself in the production took away some of their authorship. I regret a lot of those decisions – not because they made the record worse but because they weren’t wholly the band. I’d suggest ridiculous stuff, some of it worked and some of it didn’t. It was early in my tenure as an engineer and I wanted to validate myself and have an impact. That dynamic of me suggesting goofy stuff and them going along with it was partly due to my insecurity. Because of my intellectual insecurity I was associating arrogance and petulance with a purity of vision Her voice has a really lovely sustain to it and I exaggerated that using a long electronic reverb to make it a structural element of the song as opposed to just decoration. ![]() That became a reverb chamber where Kim Deal did her ghostly hoo-hoo backing vocals. The studio was limited – one performing room – so we used the big communal washroom. I don’t know if that was the first time they ever played with really powerful amps but they certainly made the most of them. I suggested some Marshall amps for the big loud parts – they took to that like a fish to water. There were parts of the song that needed a dynamic blow-up where things would get heavier but the band were playing through really small amps. The band played well and my job was pretty easy. We recorded in a modest studio in Boston but it sounded great. musician and producer Steve Albini at his studio in Chicago in 2005. View image in fullscreen ‘I regret the way I treated the band in print afterwards’. It’s emblematic of what we do with that loud/quiet dynamic. ![]() Sonically, if you had to pick a song to sum up our band this would be it. There’s something about the major to minor chord shift in the song that resonates along with the universal sentiment of the title. ![]() We didn’t know what we were doing but we did it well. Steve’s approach was more cavalier than thoughtful, it was just: “Let’s fucking try that.” But I think his attitude worked because it blended well with the naivety of the band. We had a laissez-faire attitude, like, “Oh here’s this idea that is completely unrealised and it goes like this …” It wasn’t that we didn’t care – maybe we were just on fire at the time. We worked with Steve Albini in the studio. The recording took place in 1987 and was released on the Surfer Rosa album the following year. I was in the bedroom playing this song and she stuck her head out – and she never did this with any other song, ever – and said: “That’s a good one, finish it.” She dressed quite goth, so it took a while. One day my ex-wife was in there doing her makeup. I used to write songs in my apartment’s bathroom – for privacy. ![]()
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