Steve Albini has a knack for making guitars sound like buzzsaws and drums sound huge and punishing. So when
Tad flew to Chicago to spend a few days recording with
Albini at the controls, it seemed like an ideal match. The sessions with
Albini produced an EP, 1990's
Salt Lick, and if it lacked a bit of the hard tread of
Tad's uber-heavy debut album,
God's Balls, it did capture the fine details of the group's attack with greater precision. While
God's Balls sounded like
Jack Endino had doubled down on the band's muscular style with studio technique,
Salt Lick confirms they didn't need much help. The recording on
Salt Lick doesn't seem to exaggerate the band's unrelenting and physical sound, but it allows the guitars to sound a bit sharper while highlighting the precision of Steve Wied's drums and Kurt Danielson's bass. And the frantic report of Tad Doyle and Gary Thorstensen's guitars responds well to
Albini's crisp but steel-reinforced audio. In terms of songs,
Salt Lick doesn't quite match up to
God's Balls, largely because there aren't as many of them; recorded and mixed in a mere three days,
Salt Lick doesn't sound like a rush job, but the shorter running time is a reminder you can only do so much over a long weekend. Still, this EP demonstrated just how tight this band of supposedly deranged lumberjacks really was, and how much was going on in the interplay between the guitars.
Salt Lick was a worthy follow-up to
God's Balls, and an impressive stepping stone to the creative breakthrough of
Tad's next album,
8-Way Santa. ~ Mark Deming