Album Review: The Jesus Lizard – “Rack” (Noise Rock)

Written by Kirk

Music scenes are funny. We often take them for granted, and it rarely takes more than ten seconds of scrolling through Twitter to see a take that makes you want to burn the entire internet down. But one thing we are all guilty of—myself included—is forgetting that no one has ever truly organically created a new style of music since Thak first smacked a rock in his cave in a rhythmic beat. Which is fine; one of the most beautiful parts of music is the degree to which artists will experiment with instruments and sounds and textures to find something that’s speaks to them. Or, better yet, us.

Now, before you all gather outside of Noob Heavy’s editorial office (we technically don’t have one) and demand my head on a platter (which my editor would likely be more than happy to give you), let me give you an example. Glenn Branca is known for a lot of various musical discoveries. One thing for which he is most famous is creating chamber music using rock musicians. Both of these have existed for a long time by themselves, but no one had really tried combining the two before Branca began writing and arranging various pieces in NYC in the early ‘80s (and very different that Frank Zappa’s approach to classical music during the late ‘60s with The Mothers of Invention). What really sets artists like Branca and Zappa from a lot of their contemporaries is their ability to innovate through experimentation, which is the heart of one of the most important words in any metalheads vocabulary:  sub-genres.

Let’s jump into the Wayback Machine with Mr. Peabody and Sherman and travel back in time to Austin, Texas in 1987. Local noise rock band Scratch Acid have just broken up, with the former bandmates preparing to go their separate ways. That is until vocalist David Yow was recruited by classical guitarist Duane Denison to play bass on some songs he wanted to record. Yow suggested his former bandmate, David Sims, might be better suited for the task and offered to sing instead. The trio rehearsed several times using a drum machine before Yow and Sims moved to Chicago the following year, marking the end of the partnership until Denison followed suit in 1989. And that’s the story of how The Jesus Lizard came to Chicago and conquered the noise rock scene, recording two EPs and four albums with the legendary Steve Albini before signing to Capitol Records in 1995, releasing two more albums (sans Mr. Albini, sadly), and calling it quits in 1999 after Capitol dropped them mid-contract. But their legacy is nothing if not incendiary, particularly those records released on Touch & Go Records.

Reunions came and went. Scratch Acid reunited twice—in 2006 and again in 2012—and the same for The Jesus Lizard—once in 2008 and again in 2017. Guess you can’t keep a good noise rock band down, huh?  And every time there was a reunion, fans kept asking the same question: “When are you gonna put out some new music?” And, like many bands that have gone on reunion tours to cash in on those nostalgia bucks, it seemed like new music wasn’t on the horizon…that is until earlier this year when fans finally got their wish. A NEW JESUS LIZARD ALBUM WAS ANNOUNCED. Queue a whole bunch of guys in their 40s and 50s squealing like a bunch of schoolgirls while they try to remember if A) they still have their tour shirt from 1992, and B) it still fits (spoiler alert: it doesn’t). And if I’d been a Jesus Lizard fan back in the day, I’d probably be in the same boat (minus the delusion about my body type after 40); I’ve done at least two full discography dives since the new records was announced, and these guys are legends for a reason (e.g.: Goat isn’t so much an album title as it is an album descriptor), but does this new album, Rack, hold up?

The short answer is, “Yes.”  Okay, sure, Yow, Sims, Denison, and drummer Mac McNeilly are all in their 60s (Sims is literally the baby of the group and will turn 61 shortly after this record’s release date) and not what you would consider to be “spring chickens,” these guys are about as far from “old men” as guys their age can get. As the meme goes, “Punk isn’t dead, it just goes to bed at a more reasonable hour.” But jokes aside, you’d have a hard time reconciling with yourself that it’s been over 25 years since the Jesus Lizard released any new music. In fact, they sound more focused and energized than they have since the release of Down in 1994. The first half of Rack feels like an homage to the Pixies’s famous LOUDquietLOUD approach, juxtaposing the bombastic fury of “Hide & Seek,” “Grind,” and “Lord Godiva” with the slower, more contemplative “Armistice Day,” “What If?”, and “Alexis Feels Sick” to create a start/stop/start effect similar to that of riding in the back of my mom’s Mazda 626 while my brother tried learning to drive stick shift. Are they fucking with us on purpose, or are we expecting too much out of these guys? Better question: should I just shut my mouth and enjoy the ride?

“Falling Down”, “Dunning Kruger”, “Moto(R)”, “Is That Your Hand?”, and “Swan the Dog” all maintain a steady flow of energy, rounding out the chaotic touch-and-go approach of the first half into a smoother but still chaotic pace. Yow’s yowls sound as if they haven’t aged a day. Sims’s bass work is an absolute delight, punctuating each song in just the right way so that you can’t miss it if you tried while also not overpowering any part of the song. Denison’s guitar work seamlessly transitions from electric buzzsaw to a wall of sound crashing over top of you, all jagged and just sharp enough to scrape your skin without drawing any blood. And McNeilly’s drumming is the perfect compliment to Sims’s bass work, not so much stealing the show as filling in the blanks so that everyone shines when it’s their turn to do so. He’s loud when he needs to be loud, soft when he needs to be soft, and somehow everything in between.  These aren’t men out trying to phone it in because someone drove a dump truck full of money in front of their rehearsal space and told them to throw an album together; instead, these are men who realized there’s still life left in that basilisk, and it was time to let it run free across the lake at least one more time.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Pop culture is killing itself on rehashed, rebooted nostalgia. It’s big bucks for Gen Xers like me who missed out on a lot of the bands the became popular well after they broke up <cough> The Misfits <cough> or television and movie properties that became cult classics many years after it made any sense to make a sequel <cough> Beetlejuice <cough>. But just because the money’s there—and it is—doesn’t necessarily mean the endeavors are worth it. Can a band really catch lightning in a bottle again after almost three decades? In this case, yeah, they can. Rack stands up to the band’s reputation and (hopefully) won’t be seen as their Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  Musically, it’s all there; there’s fire and passion behind each and every one of these songs, and not one performance on this record feels “phoned-in.” The Jesus Lizard are doing with Rack what they always have done and just making good art the way you used to: with your hands. The result speaks for itself.