Steve Albini's best records, from Nirvana and Pixies to PJ Harvey ...

Steve Albini, the musician and recording engineer behind some of the most acclaimed albums of the past 30 years, has died of a heart attack. He was 61.

Albini's list of credits is impossibly long and impressive. His work with artists like Nirvana, Pixies, PJ Harvey and Ty Segall, as well as his own bands like Shellac and Big Black, have resulted in some of the most influential records of all time.

His no-nonsense, anti-capitalist attitude towards the music industry has made him a beacon for musicians who want to enjoy a career making art without becoming too entangled with the machinations of the music industry.

His famous The Problem With Music essay, and his letter to Nirvana before they worked together are classic examples of his unique ethos.

Below, we've put together just 10 examples of Albini's greatness as an engineer and musician to help celebrate a truly remarkable career.

Nirvana – In Utero

Perhaps the best-known work of Albini's career was probably also the most contentious. Nirvana's 1993 album is a true modern rock classic, but the path to its release got messier than anyone would have liked.

Albini jumped on triple j not long after its release to chat with Richard Kingsmill about the album and the effect it had on his life at that point, in typically forthright fashion.

"I enjoyed working with them and recording that record quite a bit," he said.

"All of the chaos that ensued with the controversy about the record afterward really was a disgusting example of how control-happy the music industry is. I didn't enjoy that at all."

The chaos he speaks of started when the band's label took issue with the album's abrasive sound, a hallmark of Albini's work that Nirvana had initially wanted to tap into.

Songs were ultimately remixed by slicker producers, to Albini's chagrin, and there was a lot of back and forth about why the record sounded the way it did.

Albini told triple j that, importantly, Nirvana got their way.

"The record that is in the stores now is ultimately the record that the band wanted to be there," he said.

"The band did ultimately get everything that they wanted. They were responsible for picking the songs, the songs that were remixed were remixed at their behest and under their supervision. The mastering was done under their control.

"The record that people are buying in the store is exactly the record that Nirvana wanted them to buy."

However, the experience left a sour taste in Albini's mouth and he admitted he wasn't able to listen to the final product.

"I haven't listened to it at all since it's been released," he said.

"I was quite proud of the job I did on that record before all the chaos started, and then all the yelling and shouting and finger pointing and people saying that I'd ruined their record and stuff. Once that started, it became very difficult for me to even hear those songs and keep my lunch down."

At the time, he felt that working on In Utero would be detrimental to his career as major labels perceived him as difficult to work with.

"There's no chance that I will ever record another big band," he said. "That Nirvana record has effectively ruined my career in that regard. The major record companies are absolutely through dealing with me.

"I did that record in in February and, since then, I haven't had a single telephone call from somebody from a record company asking me to work on a major band. I haven't even had so much as a as a whisper of interest from a big band since then. I'd be very surprised if it ever happens."

Moreso, the types of fledgling bands that Albini had worked with consistently since the beginning of his career began to see him as out of reach after working with the world's biggest rock band.

"The Nirvana record has been pretty destructive in that respect," he said.

"A lot of the smaller bands tend to think that I'm either now part of the big corporate music industry, or they think that because of that record was a success, I am now going to be charging outlandish sums of money to do records and I'm out of their league.

"There are lots of things about it that have been quite negative and quite destructive."

Jimmy Page and Robert Plant – Walking into Clarksdale

The impact of the Nirvana ballyhoo didn't stop the creative forces behind Led Zeppelin, one of the world's biggest rock bands, from enlisting Albini to help them make a rare late-era record.

Jimmy Page and Robert Plant's Walking Into Clarksdale is not their best work, nor is it Albini's, but its testament to the engineer's reputation that these titans of rock'n'roll chose him when they decided they wanted to make a straightforward, stripped back rock record.

"He really caught what was in the room," Plant told Dave Grohl for Ray Gun magazine.

"He got it all sounding really good in the shortest space of time. Without any pain at all.

"Without him, we wouldn't have made a great record."

Pixies – Surfer Rosa 

The album that essentially drafted the alt-rock blueprint and cemented the Pixies and Albini's names in the history books.

The quiet-loud dynamics, the surreal songwriting, the gritty, experimental flourishes — it's all here on a record whose influence extended to luminaries like Kurt Cobain, Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, David Bowie and well beyond.

But Surfer Rosa had humble beginnings, with a simple suggestion from the head of Pixies' label, 4AD, they should link up with the frontman for underground Chicago faves, Big Black.

"We met Steve Albini at a coffee shop and that was it, we were in the next day," guitarist Joey Santiago told Guitar.com in 2018. "We were excited to get the Pixies on the map."

The band were confident in the road-tested material that would make up their full-length debut, "it just had to get captured in an exciting sense, and Albini was a pretty damn good choice."

That's the understatement of the century.

Albini's no-nonsense recording philosophy was a perfect match for Pixies' offbeat song-craft. His approach was exacting, prioritising authenticity above all else while still getting gnarly guitars, pummelling drums, spontaneous takes and rendering plenty of actual space between it all.

Surfer Rosa was certified proof you didn't need a fancy studio or effects to craft a classic. Kim Deal's vocals for 'Gigantic' and 'Where Is My Mind?' — two of indie rock's most enduring anthems — were recorded in a cement-lined bathroom.

Holed up at Boston's Q-Division studio, Surfer Rosa was recorded in just 10 days. That "seemed lavish by my standards," Albini told the Life of the Record podcast in 2023, adding with a chuckle: "Having more than a week to make a record just seemed like an absurd luxury in my mind.

"Get in, spit on your hands, make the record and get out, you know, like that's my entire work ethic. [It is] kind of hardened into that way of thinking."

Albini charged a fee of US$1,500 and declined to take royalties, a rule he lived by his whole career because he deemed it "unethical" to make money from artists' work in perpetuity.

Living by those same rigorous standards and a deep disdain for commercial music practises also led to him disowning the album that first cemented his legacy.

In a 1994 issue of fanzine Forced Exposure, he dismissed Surfer Rosa as "a patchwork pinch-loaf from a band who at their top dollar best are blandly entertaining college rock".

However, he'd later walk back his comments and apologised.

"I'm ashamed of the way I treated [Pixies]. They didn't deserve that," Albini told Life of the Record.

"At the time, I had all of these like conflicting intellectual perspectives on it, and I couldn't just listen to it for its effect. And now when I hear it as a finished record, I think it sounds very good and I think the band sounds very good and I don't find a lot to criticise."

Nearly 40 years later, very few music scholars can either.

PJ Harvey – Rid of Me

When Albini was approached by Nirvana to work on In Utero, he sent them a copy of Polly Jean Harvey's second album Rid Of Me.

"Kurt told me very specifically that he thought Polly's voice was great on those recordings," Albini told SPIN magazine in 2013. "He was a fan."

It's easy to trace a sonic line between the two albums. Rid Of Me is easily the toughest and most intimidating PJ Harvey has ever sounded. It's a bracing, feminist statement where the band's punk thrashing is augmented by Albini's abrasive, stormy work behind the desk.

"I really wanted that very bare, very real sound. I knew that it would suit the songs," Harvey said. "It's like touching real objects or feeling the grain of wood. That's what his sound is like to me. It's very tangible. You can almost feel the room."

The bulk of the album was knocked out in three days, giving an intensity to the likes of the burly 50ft Queenie and the searing Man-Size.

"I have found that records don't get better if you work on them longer. They get better if you work on them with more attention," Albini said.

His approach was "to set the band up completely and let them perform normally, then record as it happened."

It's easier said than done but the no-nonsense results speak for themselves.

On the unsettling, cool-as-f**k title track it's as if you can hear Harvey stalking the studio. Impossibly, she hisses "Lick my legs, I'm on fire", from behind while battering you from the front: "Don't you wish, you never, never met her?"

The Jesus Lizard – Goat

One of Albini's longest standing relationships was with The Jesus Lizard, who first teamed up with the engineer when they moved to Chicago in the late 1980s.

"If I had to place money for who is the best rock band in the world right now, it would be The Jesus Lizard in all categories," Albini told Richard Kingsmill on triple j in 1993.

On Goat, the band's second album, the band's tense and ferocious brand of noise-rock cuts deep. The sneering attitude of David Yow's expressive voice the perfect complement to the band's rumbling rhythm section and searing guitar.

His work with this band no doubt helped Albini link up with bands of a similar ilk, with everyone from The Mark Of Cain to Fugazi to Mclusky choosing to enlist Albini to help them make records with a similar menace.

While he loved their music and live show, Albini was equally as impressed with the band as people, believing they had the foresight to ensure a strong independent future by learning from bands who'd gone before them.

"The fact they've been so good for so long is just testament to the calibre of people they are really," he said.

"In the years they've been around, they've seen many bands that are their contemporaries sign to major labels and be destroyed by the process. They've learned from other people's mistakes."

Shellac – 1000 Hurts

Shellac only made six albums in the 30 years they were together (their sixth, To All Trains, is out this Friday) but every one of them was a brilliantly pummelling display of terrifying rock'n'roll.

Like much of the music Albini made as a musician, 1000 Hurts is both proficient and primal. While the sinewy three-piece lock in together with apparent ease, the noise they make is constantly tense and often abrasive.

Lyrically, Albini's anger and sadness is palpable as he processes the death of his mother, and dreams about revenge, making for plenty of uncomfortable moments.

Savages front woman Jehnny Beth says it was 1000 Hurts that made her want to become a bassist, and that she learnt how to play the whole album from start to finish.

"I love everything about Shellac," she told Uncut magazine in May 2020.

"It's everything I like about music and the way to approach music.

"I've heard a lot about Steve Albini and how he records music: the idea is that it's a performance, and if you capture something that's unique then you will sound unique."

Dirty Three – Ocean Songs

Long before he became Nick Cave's closest collaborator, Warren Ellis was the weirdy, beardy violinist out front of Dirty Three, conjuring electric instrumentals with guitarist Mick Turner and drummer Jim White.

Currently back in action on tour with their first album in a decade, the group's recorded their fourth album, Ocean Songs, at Albini's Chicago studio, Electrical Audio.

During the recording, "Steve Albini gave me some words I live by" Ellis recalled in an Instagram tribute to the famed production engineer.

"We were lost in the middle of recording and about to give up. We were trying to make a quiet album and we were anything but quiet," He wrote.

"Steve recognised the creative struggle. 'Don't forget what you came in here to do'. [The] album's existence as it is, is down to his advice in a fragile moment of doubt. I think of this advice most times I am in the studio. A gentleman and pleasure to work with."

Toning down their turbulent tempos and distorted violins for the first time, Ocean Songs instead ventures into the eye of the storm, upping the atmosphere in evocative, sometimes fragile music that expresses something words never could.

While Dirty Three captain the ship, Albini's presence is felt in the stern and rudder, gently guiding and capturing three musicians at their most elemental, deeply tapped into crafting 'Authentic Celestial Music' — as the album's centrepiece is titled.

Albini may have worked with several Australian acts — The Mark of Cain, My Disco, Purplene and Sleepwalks among them — but there's a reason Dirty Three is the first one people think of.

Joanna Newsom – Ys

On paper, Ys seems like a record well outside Albini's raw, noisy wheelhouse. Joanna Newsom's ambitious second album is a collection of five lengthy orchestral folk pieces with lush arrangements from Van Dyke Parks and mixing by Jim O'Rourke.

While Newsom enlisted producer Tim Boyle to record the backing orchestra, she chose Albini to commit her vocals and harp to tape.

"I was in this small room with Steve Albini and nobody else, and I was playing the songs exactly as they are, and it was a pretty intense time," she told The Wire in 2006.

"I had it candlelit, in the dark with just candles and conjuring up these pretty insane moments that I had been experiencing."

"My task was a really straightforward one," Albini told Mel Bampton on The Producers Series in 2007.

"I gotta say, she tore ass on that thing. She's one of the best musicians I've ever worked with. It's an unwieldy instrument, really difficult to control and she has that thing down."

Albini even got to try out a few new microphone techniques "as a means of capturing all the subtleties of the instrument. It worked out pretty well, I was pleased."

Indeed, Newsom's haunting presence and playing anchors the album's sweeping, symphonic compositions.

"It was a joy working on that record," Albini said. "She's a terrific player, she sings like an angel, everything about it was great."

The feeling was mutual. Newsom later called Albini "pretty much the best producer in the world" and reunited with him for 2015's Divers.

Cloud Nothings – Attack On Memory

The Cleveland band had released records before Attack On Memory but it was the first Cloud Nothings album that truly mattered, making multiple end of year lists.

It has all of Albini's fingerprints — a spacious recording that sounds truly alive, making the dynamics all the more explosive — but credit must go to frontman Dylan Baldi's nervy, hooky songwriting. His throat-shredding yelps and infectious riffs leap out at you.

From moody opener 'No Future/No Past' to the triumphant 'Stay Useless' and epic, cathartic 'Wasted Days', the album is another stellar example of how Albini would just let a band play like they do live and allow us to bask in the raw, urgent afterglow of that synergy.

That famously hands off approach was quite literal.

"Steve Albini played Scrabble on Facebook almost the entire time [we were recording]," Baldi told Pitchfork in 2012.

"He would alternate between that and writing on his food blog. I don't even know if he remembers what our album sounds like."

In a Reddit AMA, Albini explained it wasn't disinterest but a form of disciplined attention.

"When I first started making records I would sit in front of the console concentrating on the music every second. I found out the hard way that I tended to fiddle with things unnecessarily and records ended up sounding tweaked and weird. I developed a couple of techniques to avoid this, to keep me from messing with things while still paying attention enough to catch problems."

In any case, there was no hard feelings. Cloud Nothings reunited with Albini for 2020's The Black Hole Understands and were among the first acts to share an online tribute to the late, great producer.

Songs: Ohia – The Magnolia Electric Co

The relationship between Albini and singer-songwriter Jason Molina was particularly special, evidenced in the way the engineer could make the singer's heart-wrenching songs sound as pained as the words on the page.

They first worked together on Molina's final album as Songs: Ohia, 2003's The Magnolia Electric Co., a classic album of beautiful yet tortured Americana that sounds like no one else.

"Just his natural talents were remarkable," Albini told the Better Yet podcast in 2019.

"He had a beautiful voice and a way with words that allowed you to imagine that the words meant far more than they actually did. His delivery, his choice of words, the imagery in his songs, all of it was unique to him."

Albini's hands-off approach gelled beautifully with Molina's way of working. The engineer understood that the musician was looking for something deeper than perfection.

"There is a class of artist that is more interested in surprising themselves and having the experience of discovery than they are in meticulously crafting something," Albini said.

"Someone like Bob Dylan, or Will Oldham, or Jason Molina, they're okay with it coming out bad. The whole point of it isn't to do something that is objectively good, the point is to do something that's meaningful on more than one level."

Head to the ABC listen app to hear interviews with and tributes to Steve Albini.