It was a dream the band members shared. Little did they or anyone else know they fulfilled it in the nick of time.
This Minneapolis band was one of the last to work with studio legend Steve Albini
Scrunchies’ new record, “Colossal,” was recorded with the Nirvana and Pixies collaborator just a few months before his death.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
August 22, 2024 at 12:00PM
One of the Twin Cities’ best noise-making, throat-shredding rock acts of the past few years — with members from previous buzz-making groups like Kitten Forever and Bruise Violet — Scrunchies is now one of the last bands in the world to get to record an album helmed by legendary studio wiz Steve Albini.
Drummer Danielle Cusack remembered, “Probably since the first time Laura and I met, we would always be like, ‘Oh, I love this Nirvana album, I love that PJ Harvey album, I love his values and what he stands for.’”
“We had been talking about him so long it felt like we had to work our way up to working with him,” added Cusack’s bandmate, singer/guitarist Laura Larson.
“I’m glad we finally did it when we did.”
Known for helming Nirvana’s Minnesota-made swan-song LP “In Utero” — plus other groundbreaking records by Harvey, the Pixies, the Breeders, the Jesus Lizard, Duluth’s Low and other underground favorites — Albini brought Scrunchies down to his Chicago studio Electrical Audio to record with him for five days last October.
The resulting album, aptly titled “Colossal,” arrives this week via Learning Curve Records with a release party Saturday at the Turf Club, 10 months after its recording and four months since Albini died of a heart attack at age 61.
“Colossal” is undeniably an Albini kind of record: beautifully buzzing and needling guitar parts, from-the-gut vocals that grab listeners by the throat, and drums loud and heavy enough that you can almost feel the drummer’s blisters on your own hands.
Those drums, in particular, were exactly what Scrunchies wanted.
“I cried the first time I heard them on playback,” Cusack recounted. “It was like: ‘OK, I officially have the Albini sound.’”
Scrunchies’ own manic sound comes through loud and clear, too, from the full-throttle opener “Brute” to a provocative final track called “Wild Geranium” that pieces together spoken-word-like lyrics and loud/quiet/loud explosiveness. In between, the trio’s groove power — amped up by newer band member Jeremy Warden on bass — is emphasized in wildly swinging and bashing standouts like “High Pile” and “Generator,” the latter’s danceability underlined by a new music video featuring a Los Angeles fitness class/group called Pony Sweat.
A fixture in the Minnesota scene for a decade and a half since she fronted the band Baby Guts in her late teens, Larson continues to howl and rage against sexism, bigotry, homophobia and other woes. Since the dissolution last year of her previous band Kitten Forever — which hit you over the head with their riot-grrrl themes, in a good way — she’s stepped back on sounding too political or overt.
“I still think being a woman in a rock band is radical in and of itself; you’re already making a statement,” she said in an interview with Cusack at Minneapolis’ new women’s sports viewing hangout, A Bar of Their Own.
“I don’t want to be expected to fit a certain mold as a political band or be too blatant with my lyrics.”
Also a former teen-punk from her days in Bruise Violet, Cusack said of Larson’s songwriting, “I joke that she’s kind of like the Zodiac Killer with her lyrics. She sort of hints around and uses metaphors. When you find out what they mean, then they really hit you.”
Larson woodshedded songs with her bandmates for months ahead of their sessions with Albini, hence her comment about having to “work our way up to work with him.”
When they got to Albini’s studio, Larson remembered, “There were about two minutes of us acting a little starstruck, and the rest of the week it was just like we were working with a peer and a collaborator.”
Still, there was no avoiding the history of Albini’s work. At one point in the sessions, Larson picked up a cool Veleno guitar housed in the studio to play it on a few tracks. Albini casually told her after she’d been using it a while, “Kurt [Cobain] used that a lot for ‘In Utero.’”
In the end, Scrunchies’ members say the sessions lived up to their dreams: “More than anything, he showed us what we were capable of doing ourselves,” Cusack said.
“He genuinely cared about what we were doing,” said Larson, recounting how Albini even graphed out her lyrics to make a more precise recording process. “His trust in us was huge, and I think it allowed us to thrive in ways we hadn’t yet achieved.”
And there were no indicators of Albini being in poor health, Larson said: “Only that he had another band coming in the day after we were leaving, and it seemed like he never took a day off.”
In fact, the Scrunchies bandleader recounted in a somber tone, “When we were leaving on the last day, Steve said, ‘See you for the next album!’”
“Getting to work with him is only part of the story to this record, not the whole story,” Larson summarized. “But we’re so proud to have done it and so happy how it turned out, we’ll probably keep talking about it forever.”
Scrunchies
With: In Lieu, Mary Jam.
When: 8:30 p.m. Sat.
Where: Turf Club, 1601 W. University Av., St. Paul.
Tickets: $15, axs.com or scrunchiesband.com.
The three-time Grammy winner will sing at the Ordway on Saturday.
