BLACK FLAG - Loose Nut LP

Another fruit of the March 1985 sessions which rounded out In My Head and also yielded The Process of Weeding Out, Loose Nut finds Flag in a somewhat more accessible mode than the avant-hardcore of the former or the jazz experimentation of the latter.

Essentially a concept album about being horny and frustrated (the guitar tone at points seems to point in the direction of the noisy experiments of Big Black's Songs About F#*king), it's a much more straight-ahead and accessible album than any Black Flag had released since Damaged - which isn't to say that the skewed, oddball direction that they'd taken since then isn't reflected, just that it isn't quite as much at centre stage.

It's a lot of fun, but suggests that Black Flag broke up at the last time - after spending so long blazing a trail through uncharted territory, it wouldn't have been fun to watch Black Flag continue in this direction for much longer.