Review Summary: The skeleton of Big Black.
Once upon a time there was this nerdy guy named Steve Albini. By the time Mr. Albini was 19, he managed to teach himself how to play both bass and guitar and wanted to start a musical project based around his idea of punk rock. So, as the story goes, Steve bought a Roland TR-606 drum machine and borrowed a 4-track recorder from his friend and spent a week inside his apartment recording the
Lungs EP. The record was mostly written and recorded alone, which becomes very obvious when you listen to it.
For the most part, the guitars are very high pitched, to the point that they sound like synthesizers. While this effect works well with tracks such as "Steelworker" and "Dead Billy", it gets very annoying to listen to after a while. Albini's vocals are not as confident or as interesting as they would be on future releases, and the lyrics are pretty bland.
Take "Steelworker", for example: All Steve really did on that track was inserting a career (Steel working, hunting, etc.) in
"I am a ___ / I kill what I eat / Big thing crawling over me". However, the best track off the record would have to be "Crack", which deals with drug addiction and how it could easily destroy your life.
"Finally, this is life / Then in comes the crack / Everything falls apart" wails Steve with enough pain in his voice to convince you that he might be going through an amputation.
In the end,
Lungs basically acts as the skeleton of Big Black, what it would be like if Big Black was just an one man project. After the EP's release in 1982, Steve Albini would later recruit guitarist Santiago Durango and bassist Jeff Pezzati, who would later leave the group and would be replaced with Dave Riley. By the time the band broke up in 1987, they've unintentionally reached "musical legend" status with critics and music fans alike, which just shows the long journey the band had ever since it started out with this above-average EP.
