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Joanna Newsom Announces Intimate Solo Concerts in Los Angeles

By Jem Aswad

Executive Editor, Music

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Singer-songwriter-harpist and indie icon Joanna Newsom , who has kept a low profile since the tour supporting her 2015 album “Divers,” has announced a five-night solo residency in Los Angeles. Billed as the “Strings/Keys Incidence,” the shows will take place at the intimate Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever from May 15-19. One of the shows is a matinee.

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The May concerts — and, presumably, the ensuing album — arrive 20 years after Newsom first rose to prominence rapidly amid the “freak folk” scene of the early ’00s, touring with leading artists in the movement like Devendra Banhardt and Vetiver. While her sound on her 2004 debut album, “The Milk Eyed Mender,” was sympathetic with those artists and contains folk elements, she is an outlier, often accompanying her unconventional songs and Kate Bush-like high soprano on harp. The album was an unexpected commercial success, selling more than 200,000 copies in the U.S.

She followed two years later with “Ys,” which featured full orchestrations by legendary ‘60s musician and Brian Wilson collaborator Van Dyke Parks and a cover painting of the singer in full medieval dress, poking fun at the caricatures that emerged from her harp-playing. In 2010 she released the sprawling two-hour “Have One on Me” album, and began branching into acting, appearing on the TV series “Portlandia” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice.” She married comedian Andy Samberg in 2013; the couple have two children.

The announcement follows in full:

THE STRINGS/KEYS REINCIDENCE

Trill the trumpets!

Hoist the flags!

Raise the gates of the city!

Rip the protective plastic covers off the furniture!

Though she rides alone this time, Joanna comes equipped with her usual blistering wind-up double punch to wreak raptures upon harp and piano alike.

I know what you’re thinking — we’re all thinking it — What’s in the saddlebag, Newsom? It’s hard to tell from here, but darn if she doesn’t seem to packing some new tunes! What’s your pleasure? The golden oldies? Perhaps a cover song or two? A 17-minuter for the large-bladdered among us? Over the space of these five nights she’ll sing some, strum some, pluckety plunk some, and probably sonically boggle your noggin. The noggin inside your heart.

You should only read this next part if you’re a child, or know one who’s cool: the May 18th show will be a 3:30pm (doors at 2:30) Matinee Performance strictly for kids under 18 (and their keepers), where Mrs. Newsom has promised to forgo the “blue” material we’ve all come to know (and respect) her for, and instead tailor the setlist to be not only suitable for children, but specifically designed with them in mind. Tickets for this show will only be available for the little ones (and their keepers), a policy as ironclad as it is unenforceable!

Now as for the rest of the dates, old timer — mark them on your calendar, tattoo them on your forehead, brand them on the back of your wizened hands, but remember — only a ticket will get you in the door.

What side of history do you want to be on? The underside? The wet part? The index? The table of contents? Or the future of music? We think the answer, like God’s grace, speaks for herself.

Joanna Newsom L.A. Residency Dates:

5/15 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever

5/16 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever

5/17 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever

5/18 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever^

5/19 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever

^Matinee Show

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Joanna Newsom  

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A foggy mountain mural painted the scene perfectly as Joanna joined her merry band of musicians on stage after an acoustic set from Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold. Wearing a smile bigger than her face itself, she gazed out at the crowd with childlike wonder, before cradling her harp for “Bridges and Balloons” from her debut album, The Milk-Eyed Mender. The opening lines, “we sailed away on a winter’s day, with fate as malleable as clay,” could be mistaken for another simple song about leaving home, but just like every song she’s released since then, it veers off into uncharted territory. “Brace and buoy the living-room, a loom of metal, warp woof wimble.” I still remember shaking my head the first time I heard that song. Like many of her staunchest critics, I couldn’t get past the whimsical, almost comical vocals. Sounding like a prepubescent girl, as well as a cranky old woman, every word was jarring to the senses. It wasn’t until she opened for Björk in 2007 that I was able to really understand (and appreciate) her unique talent as a vocalist. After seeing her perform live at that show, I found her voice and persona completely enthralling.

There is something about being in Joanna’s presence, while her fingers soar across the strings of her masterfully carved harp, that cannot be experienced by listening to her albums. When she surrounds herself with a quintet of amazing multi-instrumentalists, who all make sounds using voice, violin, guitar, banjo, drums, viola, keyboard, and various non-traditional items, it becomes an unbelievably intricate display of teamwork and talent. And as if it wasn’t enough that she transitioned from harp to piano and back again (during a single song), there wasn’t a single person on the stage that didn’t do exactly the same thing with the arsenal of sound-making devices at their disposal. There were times when I was so focused on the plucking of harp strings that, even from the third row, I didn’t notice the transition from violins to recorders until the sounds of birds rang through the theater. At other times, the sound would be less distinctive and I’d have to follow its origin to a metal tube being dragged across an electric guitar string, or a tambourine lightly striking a drum head. Everything was perfectly choreographed to bring Joanna’s original compositions alive on the stage. Speaking through eye contact, everyone was in perfect sync as the score encompassed each epic piece of poetry Joanna put to song.

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To experience Joanna Newsom live is to experience great beauty. Not just for the elfin looks of the singer and harpist, of course, but because the music she creates is so utterly not of this world or time that you can’t help but be overcome by the startling arrangements you’re hearing. It’s often said, particularly around the release of her debut album 2004’s The Milk-Eyed Mender, that Newsom has a “marmite” voice that you’ll either love or hate: that’s actually being incredibly unfair on her, as while it’s a unique voice it just takes a little bit of time to “get” it and understand that Newsom is just singing naturally. Live, she focuses on songs from her two incredible (and lengthy) albums Ys and Have One On Me and sets about creating her own folkloric world, with help from a fine backing band that includes her live arrangers, the multi-talented Ryan Francesconi and Neil Morgan. At times it’s nearly impossible to keep up with the lyrical flights of fancy on the likes of ‘Soft as Chalk’ and ‘Have One On Me’ as Newsom’s fingers fly across the strings of the harp but slowly you get drawn into this medieval world of rhymes, musing on the stars and planets and nature. There are even sing-along moments like the exhilarating and euphoric ‘Good Intentions Paving Company’, which feels like a lost Brian Wilson gem but it’s the epic and meandering songs that always impress the most. It’s often said the best records are the ones which transport you someplace else; well, if you want a live show to do that, you have to see Joanna Newsom.

Health Warning: Joanna Newsom is not everyone’s cup of tea.

For Me: This was the concert of the year

Joanna Newsom: Enchanting, charming, lovely and sweet. Ahhhh and the music….

I had waited years for the chance to see Joanna Newsom live. Without reason I was a little anxious because I was concerned the show could go either way. From the moment she came on stage she put any of my unwarranted worries at bay. I was mesmerised from the start; those years of waiting had not gone in vain.

For the audience this Joanna was fun to watch; because she was evidently having fun on stage. It was obvious how much she enjoyed playing with her new music as well as her back catalogue of many people’s favourites.

Finally, yes I am a fan.

This was a fun show with Newsom playing both old favorites and new stuff off her Divers album. She was joined by various musicians including family memebrs, Amber Kaufman of Dirty projectors fame, and the main Fleet Fox himeslf, Robin Pecknold. The sound at the venue was very good, and continued to get better as the show progressed through improved balancing of the vocals and harp. My only complaints are that the seats were painfully close together (I am tall) and there was no dancing. If you enjoy kooky classical like you do freak folk, it's hard to recommend something more highly than this!

Mesmerising, captivating, lush, enthralling, thrilling, emotional, transcendent - I cannot believe there is a better live performer on the planet than Joanna Newsom - she is some kind of genius - an utterly extraordinary singer, harpist, pianist, composer, lyricist - her voice is exquisite and passionate.

The Olympia was the perfect venue. You could have heard a pin drop - she held the audience in her hand the whole time - and at the end of each song there was rapturous applause and a standing, roaring ovation at the end of a completely mind-blowing night.

An utterly enthralling concert, Joanna is a marvellous artist who is currently at the height of her craft. Backed by a simple four piece band (including her brother on drums), she dipped into her increasingly-rich back catalogue to deliver a compelling set. Standouts included 'Monkey and Bear' with its striking changes in time and tempo and crowd favourites 'Peach, Plum, Bear' and 'Good Intentions Leaving Company'. She parted the stage with a promise that it would not be another 5 years before she returns to Liverpool, I really hope this is true.

Sep. 9th 2016 - New Orleans - She played

bridges and balloons

monkey and bear

waltz of the 101st lightborne

in california

sapokanikan

leaving the city

have one on me

peach plum pear

time, as a symptom

good intentions paving company

with an encore of

albatross (Judy Collins)

Absolutely amazing, everything you could hope for

Robin Pecknold was an amazing opener. Joanna played for nearly two hours and her backing band was phenomenal. It was great to see her siblings playing with her and it was a total treat to see so many multi-instrumentalists play a ton of instruments!

Worth every penny. She's fantastic.

Really amazing concert. She and the band played nearly 2 hours, including a second encore (she said it's the only one she's done all tour) where she played a song she hadn't even prepared and made a few mistakes, which was totally endearing. Go see her, she's just amazing.

Beautiful performance as expected. The setlist, instrumentation and showmanship were all really great. Joanna Newsom brought her fantastic tracks to life and it was often mesmerizing. If you ever get the chance to see her live I would strongly recommend doing so.

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Joanna Newsom Announces Strings/Keys Residency in 2024

by Em Casalena March 11, 2024, 11:40 am

Prog-folk star Joanna Newsom is launching her residency this year, and it’s not going to be like her previous tours. The Strings/Keys Residence will likely be a stripped-down, more analog version of Newsom, and it doesn’t look like any supporting acts will be performing with her.

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The residency will feature the singer/songwriter (along with her harp) on five different dates starting on May 15 and ending on May 19 in Los Angeles, California at The Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever. May 18 will be a matinee show that guests can bring children under 18 years of age to.

Newsom famously doesn’t really use social media, but the press release for the Joanna Newsom 2024 Residency was a great read in itself .

“Trill the trumpets! Hoist the flags! Raise the gates of the city! Rip the protective plastic covers off the furniture!” the press release read. “For lo, Joanna Newsom, balladeer without compeer, Nevada City’s native daughter and Aureate Laureate of these Austral climes, comes riding down the mountain (sidesaddle, natch) to undertake a limited Los Angeles solo residency at The Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever, May 15th through May 19th, 2024!”

Fans can get their hands on tickets through Ticketmaster and Stubhub on March 15 at 10:00 am local time. It’s unclear at this time whether or not that date is for presale events or general on-sale. Still, keep an eye on both on March 15!

The Strings/Keys Residence is a mysterious one, since Newsom has not confirmed whether or not the shows will feature new music.

“I know what you’re thinking — we’re all thinking it — What’s in the saddlebag, Newsom?” the press release for the residency noted. “It’s hard to tell from here, but darn if she doesn’t seem to packing some new tunes! What’s your pleasure? The golden oldies? Perhaps a cover song or two? A 17-minuter for the large-bladdered among us? Over the space of these five nights she’ll sing some, strum some, pluckety plunk some, and probably sonically boggle your noggin. The noggin inside your heart.”

Newsom’s last studio album was Divers from 2015. Who knows? Fans who attend this upcoming residency might just get to hear new music!

Tickets won’t last for this residency, so make sure to get your tickets before they sell out!

Joanna Newsom 2024 Residency Dates

May 15 – Los Angeles, CA – The Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever

May 16 – Los Angeles, CA – The Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever

May 17 – Los Angeles, CA – The Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever

May 18 – Los Angeles, CA – The Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever (Matinee Show)

May 19 – Los Angeles, CA – The Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever

Photo by Frazer Harrison

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The Meaning Behind the 1985 Duet “Separate Lives” by Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin

© 2024 American Songwriter

Joanna Newsom Announces Spring 2024 L.A. Tour Dates

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Joanna Newsom Concert Setlists & Tour Dates

Joanna newsom at masonic lodge at hollywood forever, los angeles, ca, usa.

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• Bridges and Balloons
• A Pin-Light Bent
• Little Hand
• Sapokanikan
• Waltz of the 101st Lightborne
• Time, as a Symptom
• Inflammatory Writ
• The Air Again
• Marie at the Mill
• Have One On Me
• Leaving the City
• Monkey & Bear
• Good Intentions Paving Co.

Joanna Newsom at Kilby Block Party 2024

• In California
• Soft as Chalk
• Sawdust & Diamonds

Joanna Newsom at The Belasco, Los Angeles, CA, USA

• Bombs Are Whistling

Joanna Newsom at Bates Recital Hall, Austin, TX, USA

• Sprout and the Bean
• Have One on Me
• On a Good Day
• The Things I Say

Joanna Newsom at Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, CA, USA

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• Peach, Plum, Pear ( 205 )
• Bridges and Balloons ( 184 )
• Cosmia ( 168 )
• Have One on Me ( 159 )
• Inflammatory Writ ( 148 )

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Joanna Newsom Extends Tour

By Michelle Hyun Kim

Joanna Newsom recently announced an intimate solo harp/piano tour titled “String/Keys Incident,” her first live shows since 2016. Now, she’s added more dates in each of the cities she’s visiting: Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and Milwaukee. She heads out on the road in September and wraps up the following month. Check out her updated itinerary below, and find tickets here . (Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)

Joanna Newsom released her latest LP, Divers , in 2015. Since then, her discography has come to streaming services and cassette .

Joanna Newsom:

09-06 Philadelphia, PA - Kimmel Center - Perelman 09-07 Philadelphia, PA - Kimmel Center - Perelman 09-09 New York, NY - El Teatro at El Museo del Barrio 09-10 New York, NY - El Teatro at El Museo del Barrio 09-11 New York, NY - El Teatro at El Museo del Barrio 09-12 New York, NY - El Teatro at El Museo del Barrio 09-13 New York, NY - El Teatro at El Museo del Barrio 09-14 New York, NY - El Teatro at El Museo del Barrio 09-15 New York, NY - El Teatro at El Museo del Barrio 10-07 Chicago, IL - Thalia Hall 10-08 Chicago, IL - Thalia Hall 10-09 Chicago, IL - Thalia Hall 10-10 Chicago, IL - Thalia Hall 10-12 Milwaukee, WI - Irish Cultural and Heritage Center 10-13 Milwaukee, WI - Irish Cultural and Heritage Center

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Here Is Joanna Newsom’s ‘The Strings/Keys Reincidence’ Setlist

Earlier this week, singer and instrumentalist Joanna Newsom launched her The Strings/Keys Residence at The Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever. With multiple shows taking place until May 27, Newsom will perform several songs from her more than two-decade long career .

The show features Newsome playing harp and singing to 15 over her songs, spanning from fan-favorites to deep cuts. For some of the songs, Newsom performs alongside fellow musicians Robin Pecknold and Amber Coffman.

The show is set to have six more dates, including tonight’s (May 16), with matinees and evening shows. Fans can find a schedule of shows and purchase tickets through Hollywood Forever’s official website .

Some audience members who were in attendance at the first show have shared a setlist online .

You can see the full setlist below.

Joanna Newsom’s The Strings/Keys Reincidence- setlist

1. “Sadie” 2. “Emily” 3. “Go Long” 4. “Marie At The Mill” 5. “Divers” 6. “Have One On Me” Feat. Robin Pecknold and Amber Coffman 7. “Sapokanikan” Feat. Robin Pecknold and Amber Coffman 8. “Leaving the City” Feat. Robin Pecknold and Amber Coffman 9. “Monkey & Bear” Feat. Robin Pecknold and Amber Coffman 10. “No Wonder” 11. “The Air Again” 12. “Good Intentions Paving Co.” Feat. Robin Pecknold and Amber Coffman 13. “Baby Birch” Feat. Robin Pecknold and Amber Coffman 14. “Bombs Are Whistling” 15. “Sawdust & Diamonds”

Joanna Newsom Pays Tribute to ‘Hilarious, Loving, Loyal Friend’ Steve Albini at Utah Fest

By Daniel Kreps

Daniel Kreps

Joanna Newsom paid tribute to Steve Albini — the engineer on her acclaimed 2006 album Ys — during the singer’s set Friday at Utah’s Kilby Block Party.

Stereogum reports that prior to Newsom’s performance of “Cosmia,” one of the Ys tracks she recorded with Albini, the singer gave an emotional speech about how much the noise-rock pioneer meant to her.

“So the last few days have been pretty sad because of the loss of Steve Albini, who I love very, very much and admire in every possible way you can admire a person,” Newsom said. 

In addition to Ys — one of Albini’s essential recordings — Newsom, who previously called Albini “pretty much the best producer in the world,” also enlisted Albini to engineer her 2015 LP Divers .

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Newsom concluded Friday’s tribute by adding, “He recorded the album that this next song is on, as well as so much other stuff that I’ve done. I can’t believe I don’t get to record with him again, but I love Steve. I love you, Steve. This one’s for you.”

Following Albini’s death earlier this week at the age of 61 , many of the artists he collaborated with — like Dave Grohl , Jimmy Page , PJ Harvey , Superchunk , his Big Black bandmate Santiago Durango , and more — have shared tributes and remembrances of the legendary musician, producer, and writer .

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Joanna Newsom Pays Tribute to Steve Albini at Kilby Block Party

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The post Joanna Newsom Pays Tribute to Steve Albini at Kilby Block Party appeared first on Consequence .

Joanna Newsom took the stage at Kilby Block Party in Salt Lake City, Utah on Friday night for her first performance of 2024. During her set, she honored her frequent collaborator and “hilarious, loving, loyal friend,” the late Steve Albini .

Albini died from a heart attack in his Chicago home earlier this week, prompting many of his friends and admirers to pay tribute to the pioneering engineer and underground music icon. Newsom, who’s albums Ys and Divers both feature engineering contributions from Albini, joined those ranks with last night’s performance.

“[Albini was someone] who I love very, very much and admire in every possible way you can admire a person,” Newsom told the audience before performing the Ys cut “Cosmia.”

“I was saying to my friend this morning that on the list of all the reasons why he’s my hero, music and music-related stuff doesn’t even crack the top ten,” she continued. “He’s been so enormously important in my life musically for so many years but still just as a human, as a person, as a hilarious, loving, loyal friend to so many people. I miss him. I’m gonna miss him so much. I haven’t accepted it yet. He recorded the album that this next song is on, as well as so much other stuff that I’ve done. I can’t believe I don’t get to record with him again, but I love Steve. I love you, Steve. This one’s for you.”

Get Joanna Newsom Tickets Here

Elsewhere in her set, Newsom performed a new song, “No Wonder,” that she first debuted at a surprise set opening for Fleet Foxes last year. She closed her performance with her 2004 song, “Inflammatory Writ.”

In January, Consequence included Newson’s next release in our round-up of the most anticipated albums of 2024 . Up next, she is performing a residency at The Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever in Los Angeles this month. Grab tickets here .

Meanwhile, many other acts have paid tribute to Albini, including Nirvana , Foo Fighters , Pixies, PJ Harvey , and others. For more, check out our run-down of how Albini shaped rock in 13 albums .

Setlist: Joana Newsom at Kilby Block Party, Salt Lake City, UT, May 10th, 2024: In California Leaving The City Sadie Soft As Chalk No Wonder Sapokanikan Cosmia Sawdust & Diamonds Inflammatory Writ

Joanna Newsom Pays Tribute to Steve Albini at Kilby Block Party Jo Vito

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

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. 

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Steve Albini, Studio Master of ’90s Rock and Beyond, Dies at 61

A musician and audio engineer, he helped define the sound of alternative rock while becoming an outspoken critic of the music industry.

By Ben Sisario

Steve Albini, a rock musician and revered studio engineer who played a singular role in the development of the sound of alternative music in the 1980s, ’90s and beyond — recording acclaimed albums by Nirvana, PJ Harvey and Pixies, along with hundreds of others — while becoming an outspoken critic of the music industry, died on Tuesday at his home in Chicago. He was 61.

The cause was a heart attack, said Taylor Hales of Electrical Audio, the Chicago studio that Mr. Albini founded in 1997.

With a sharp vision for how a band should be recorded — as raw as possible — and an even sharper tongue for anything he deemed mediocre or compromised, Mr. Albini was a visionary in the studio and one of rock’s most acerbic wits.

On his own, he led the bands Big Black and Shellac, both of which venerated loud, abrasive guitars and snarling vocals. In those groups, and in virtually every project he worked on, Mr. Albini clung to punk’s defiant do-it-yourself ethic with an almost religious tenacity.

He also long maintained an impish zeal to provoke and offend. Big Black’s last, most acclaimed album, from 1987, has a typically unprintable title, and he once dismissed Nirvana — the group that later hired him to record the album “In Utero” (1993), at the peak of their fame — as nothing but “R.E.M. with a fuzzbox.”

A withering and prolific critic of the music business’s exploitive extremes, Mr. Albini wrote a widely quoted 1993 article, “ The Problem With Music ,” describing in clinical detail how naïve bands are lured into major-label deals that, in most cases, leave them broke and in debt.

In that article, which was published in The Baffler, Mr. Albini laid out a hypothetical ledger for a rock group that had signed a $250,000 record deal, but whose work, according to his math, netted the label $710,000 and the producer $90,000 — and just $4,031.25 for each member.

“The band members have each earned about ⅓ as much as they would working at a 7-Eleven,” Mr. Albini wrote, “but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month.”

However, in the 1990s, when his work as a recording engineer — he scoffed at being called a producer, thinking that term implied control over an artist’s work — was in highest demand, Mr. Albini made no apology for accepting big checks for recording major-label acts.

His recording approach, for underground bands like the Jesus Lizard and Slint, captured their muscular power with clarity, and brought out a drum sound you could feel in your gut.

Those bands also worked with Mr. Albini at their own risk; in those days, he was known for ridiculing the bands he recorded after the fact.

“Never have I seen four cows more anxious to be led around by their nose rings,” he wrote after recording “Surfer Rosa,” the seminal 1988 album by the Boston-based quartet Pixies, which became one of the defining classics of 1980s alt-rock. (Even so, Mr. Albini remained a close friend of Kim Deal, the bassist in that band, and recorded her other project, the Breeders.)

But to those who followed Mr. Albini closely, he was far more than a two-dimensional character. He became a champion poker player — winning more than $196,000 at the World Series of Poker in 2022 — and embraced social media, answering questions at great length and often with eye-opening honesty.

In recent years he also surprised many of his followers and detractors alike by revisiting his often-obnoxious past persona with a sense of contrition.

“A lot of things I said and did from an ignorant position of comfort and privilege are clearly awful and I regret them,” he wrote on Twitter , the platform now called X, in 2021.

Steve Albini was born in Pasadena, Calif., on July 22, 1962, and grew up in Missoula, Mont., where his father, Frank, worked as a wildfire research scientist.

He has described his young life in Montana as unremarkable until, as a teenager, he heard the Ramones’ first album, a blueprint of punk rock that was released in 1976. Its aggression, simplicity and puerile sense of humor opened up a new world for him.

“It was the first time I felt like there was any part of culture that represented the irreverence and goofiness and kind of mania that my friends and I were displaying,” Mr. Albini told The Guardian in an interview last year.

He enrolled at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., near Chicago, and began to develop his approach as a provocateur and a self-reliant musician. As an art project, he once stood behind a pane of plexiglass and taunted the audience to throw whatever they wanted at the barrier.

While at Northwestern, he recorded the first Big Black EP, “Lungs” (1982), almost entirely by himself on a borrowed reel-to-reel tape machine. It had cold, echoey, synthetic rhythms, and it sketched out a dark, nihilistic worldview in its opening lines: “The only good policeman is a dead one/The only good laws aren’t enforced.”

Big Black soon became a full band — though it continued to use drum machines — and the group’s output came to define a particularly raw form of the post-punk vanguard. At its best, on songs like “Kerosene” and “Jordan, Minnesota,” the band presented a nightmarish view of America, populated by arsonists, killers and child abusers, set to an impossibly intense, screeching soundtrack.

At the same time, Mr. Albini made a name for himself as a splenetic commentator on music. His written work, published in various fanzines, could seem like a form of insult comedy. He dismissed the Replacements’ beloved 1984 album, “Let It Be,” for example, as “a sad, pathetic end to a long downhill slide.”

In the late 1980s, he reached perhaps the height of his provocation with a new band he called Rapeman; the name, he said, was borrowed from a Japanese comic book, though he never denied it was meant to goad the audience. At some shows, the band faced protests. “The really annoying thing,” he once said, “was that the majority of the people on the picket line were precisely the kind of people that we would have liked at the gig.”

After making “Surfer Rosa,” which brought Pixies to wide attention, Mr. Albini became an in-demand producer for underground acts like Boss Hog, Superchunk and Urge Overkill. He recorded PJ Harvey’s “Rid of Me” (1993) with serrated guitars and — unorthodox for a major album — vocals set notably low in the mix.

He was soon courted by Nirvana for its follow-up to “Nevermind,” the album that became a global smash and ignited a revolution in the music business. Before agreeing to work with the group, he sent its three members a letter giving advice and laying out his terms.

“Bang out a record in a couple of days, with high quality but minimal ‘production,’” he wrote, “and no interference from the front office bulletheads.” He also told them, “I would like to be paid like a plumber” — meaning that he wanted a flat fee and not “points,” or a percentage of sales, a common practice among top record producers that Mr. Albini disdained as unethical.

But when the album was completed, the band’s record label, DGC, pushed for changes, and several of its tracks were remixed by Scott Litt, who had worked with R.E.M. “They waged a publicity campaign to try to shame the band into doing the record again,” Mr. Albini once told Tape Op , a magazine about audio recording.

He said his reputation had been damaged by the incident, though it was resuscitated when Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin recruited him for their 1998 album, “Walking Into Clarksdale.”

Since then, he had continued to work as an engineer and producer for countless bands, often at Electrical Audio, his studio; in a 2018 interview , he estimated that he had recorded “probably a couple thousand” albums to that point. Among the most acclaimed of them are records by Joanna Newsom, Nina Nastasia, Neurosis and Will Oldham.

His survivors include his wife, the filmmaker Heather Whinna, and his mother, Gina. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.

When asked by The Guardian last year how he would like his career to be seen if he were to retire then, Mr. Albini answered: “I’m doing it, and that’s what matters to me — the fact that I get to keep doing it. That’s the whole basis of it. I was doing it yesterday, and I’m gonna do it tomorrow, and I’m gonna carry on doing it.”

He added, with an expletive, that he didn’t care.

Ben Sisario covers the music industry. He has been writing for The Times since 1998. More about Ben Sisario