‘I’m Tired Of Being Your Mother’ is the third and final post-release digital single from the Jesus Lizard and, along with ‘Cost of Living’ and ‘Westside’, will make up the Record Store Day exclusive Flux EP, out April 12th in independent record stores.
This will be the only physical release of these three songs, available April 12th, on Black Vinyl with an etched b-side. Download and stream now, along with the new album, Rackhere.
About the track, David Yow says; “When a friend of mine was about eight years old, living outside of New Orleans, his mother once said to him, in a slow dull drawl, “I’m tired uh bein yo mutha.” That really struck me. The lyrics are actual quotes of awful things mothers have said to their children. Heartbreaking!!”
The band share a brand new track, ‘Westside’ and the single is only available digitally.
About the track, Duane Denison comments; “’Westside’ goes along with the previous single ‘Cost of Living’ — which was subconsciously influenced by Leonard Bernstein’s "West Side Story" and hence the name. Really."
David Yow adds; "There is a part in ‘Westside’ where the lyrics say, “…give him back his arm”. That was inspired by David Lynch’s Lost Highway, when Robert Blake’s character says, “Give me back my phone.”
I just paid £30 to watch a pot-bellied old guy stagger about, drenched in sweat, with his shirt and fly open, hollering, drawling, and slurring incoherently, downing cans of Stella and spitting fountains of flobber all over the shop. It was fucking brilliant. Yes, I have finally witnessed a show by the Jesus Lizard. I can now die happy.
There will have been many in the room who, like me, never expected to have this experience. If the announcement of a new album after a quarter-century break seemed to come out of nowhere, the announcement of UK tour dates off the back of produced excitement of a fever pitch. Of the eight cities on the list, Leeds has, over the last decade or so, proven itself to be the home of a new wave of noise heavily, and unashamedly inspired by the band, and the 90s noise rock scene more broadly. Try talking about Blacklisters without mentioning the Jesus Lizard. It was hardly a shock, then, when tickets for this date sold out in three minutes. The biggest shock – for me, and likely many others – was actually bagging a ticket. There weren’t many resales, either: people really, really wanted to make this.
It’s perhaps hard to overstate the significance of the band. The four-piece, formed in 1987, were absolutely pivotal in defining the noise rock sound which emerged from Chicago, platformed by Touch and Go Records, but not even a split release with Nirvana in ’93 – when Nirvana were absolutely massive in the wake of Nevermind – would see them connect with a wider audience. There’s a fairly obvious reason for this: there simply wasn’t even the vaguest hint of commercialism or accessibility about their raw, volatile sound, and not even signing with Capitol could elevate them above cult status.
There’s always the risk that seeing an act way, way after their heyday will be a disappointment, but not so the Jesus Lizard.
Following support act Carehome – a post-punk noise-rock hybrid with gloomy synths, textured guitars, and aggro vocals, pulling together elements of Tar, Kowloon Walled City, and Profane, among others, who were absolutely top-drawer – the Jesus Lizard arrive on stage punctually and David Yow introduces the band with ‘We are The Smiths… does anyone want their dick sucked?’ as they launch straight into ‘Puss’. The crowd goes nuts, and Yow flops face forward off the edge of the stage into the crowd before he’s raised the mic to his mouth. In a blink, he’s way towards the back of the venue.
Carehome
The band are so, so tight; it’s impossible to pick out a standout performance or track from a huge setlist: they’re perfectly cohesive, and with minimal gear churn out maximal noise, while Yow… well, he’s just deranged – and yet for all of the staggering, swaying, all the moments he looks like he’s tripping over his mic stand, like each time he leans into the crowd and places a hand on the head or shoulder of a fan in the front row like me might launch himself into the audience or simply topple forward, he doesn’t miss a line or a vocal cue. And the material from Rack sits perfectly comfortably alongside the rest of the catalogue in a set that’s relentless and consistent in quality and ferocity.
Between songs, David wants us to clap. And keep clapping, until the next song starts. For the majority of the set. We clap. David wants us to follow a call-and-response of ‘Fuck Trump’. We call back ‘Fuck Trump,’ because, well, it’s a sentiment we can all get behind. Fuck Trump. But it’s also like a sort of game of ‘David says’. He seems to enjoy it. And we all do, because fuck, we’re here in a 400-capacity venue in Leeds watching the Jesus Lizard.
the Jesus Lizard
Yow actually stayed on stage for the majority of the set, but keeps on leaning forward, placing a hand on a shoulder, or a head, as if testing the water for another lunge. Perhaps because of this, I was taken by surprise when, while standing about as far to the side of the stage as possible and in a space between the front and second row, he leaned forward, put his hand on my shoulder, and lurched forward. I had my hands in the pockets of my hoodie and no time to react, and he landed on my face and began to fall… people around me managed to react and preserve a distance between the man and the floor, and with some effort he was hoisted up and around and returned the stage – unlike a chancing stage diver shortly after, for whom the crowd parted. “Well that was fun” he was heard to mutter once upright and back on stage.
These are the kind of exuberant antics one may expect around a young band rather than one where they’re pushing sixty-five. Instead, Yow is dropping and pushing ten between verses during ‘7 vs 8’, before heading backstage, swaying, followed one by one by the rest of the band, with Mac McNeilly hammering out a blistering drum solo to bring the set to a close.
Fuck. Christ. Wow. We got what we came for alright.
What’s that? A new song from the Jesus Lizard that isn’t on RACK?
‘Cost Of Living’ is out now on streaming platforms.
“Simply because I wrote the words to ‘Cost of Living’ doesn’t mean that I know exactly what it’s about. I think it has to do with the dread and self-loathing that addicts experience on a very regular basis. You can pick whichever type of addict you choose.” – David Yow
“A friend asked me if we had any tricked-out, odd timing type things with twists and turns, and I said ‘Yeah, I think so….’” – Duane
the Jesus Lizard, who release Rack, their first new album in 26 years, on Friday the 13th of September via Ipecac Recordings, offer a second preview of what has become one of 2024’s most eagerly-awaited albums with today’s arrival of ‘Alexis Feels Sick’.
Inspired by Girls Against Boys/Soulside drummer Alexis Fleisig’s guarded opinion of modern life, the four-and-a-half-minute track is met with an esoteric, David Yow created video.
Yow shares insight into the concept behind the clip: “The ‘Alexis Feels Sick’ video is a disgusting and comically impressionistic portrait of American Late Stage Capitalism… with some doggies.” Duane Denison adds that it’s a “study in greed, gluttony, and… dogs.”
Check it here:
AA
News of the band’s return came last month via The New York Times, who said the new LP is “a raucous record that recaptures the lunging momentum, stealth nuance and unhinged Yow-isms of [their] best work.” ‘Hide & Seek’, the first taste from the 11-song album, was described by Yow as “a perky ditty about a witch who can’t behave, and it’s got nearly as many hooks as a Mike Tyson fight.” The video captures the band – Mac McNeilly, David Wm. Sims, Denison and Yow – recording Rack with Producer Paul Allen at Nashville’s Audio Eagle Studio.
the Jesus Lizard reconvened in 2009 for a limited number of shows and have maintained their bond both as friends in close contact with one another, and touring bandmates. “We literally only made the record because we thought it would be fun to make the record,” says Sims. With McNeilly highlighting the strong relationship amongst the musicians: “We are bonded by the music we make, and also by the respect we have for each other.”
Album pre-orders, which include several limited-edition vinyl variants, as well as CD, digital, and cassette offerings, are available here.
The band also recently announced a number of tour dates, stretching into 2025, with recent additions including a performance at Chicago’s Warm Love Cool Dreams festival on Sept. 28, a newly added date in Cincinnati and second shows added in Dublin and Seattle.
September 7 Raleigh, NC Hopscotch Music Festival September 26 Cincinnati, OH Bogart’s September 28 Chicago, IL Warm Love Cool Dreams October 13 Las Vegas, NV Best Friends Forever Music Festival October 31 Dallas, TX Longhorn Ballroom November 1 Austin, TX Levitation / The Far Out Lounge December 9 Pittsburgh, PA Stage AE December 11 Brooklyn, NY Brooklyn Steel December 12 Boston, MA Roadrunner December 13 Philadelphia, PA Union Transfer December 14 Washington, DC Black Cat December 15 Washington, DC Black Cat December 18 Atlanta, GA Variety Playhouse January 7 Glasgow, UK QMU January 8 Manchester, UK Academy 2 January 9 Leeds, UK Brudenell Social Club January 10 Bristol, UK The Fleece January 11 London, UK Electric Ballroom January 12 Brighton, UK Concorde 2 January 14 Belfast, UK The Limelight January 15 Dublin, IE Button Factory January 16 Dublin, IE Button Factory May 2 Solana Beach, CA Belly Up Tavern May 3 Los Angeles, CA The Fonda Theatre May 5 San Francisco, CA The Fillmore May 8 Portland, OR Revolution Hall May 10 Seattle, WA Neptune Theatre May 11 Seattle, WA Neptune Theatre
I’d feel guilty for taking so long to get around to reviewing this one, but since the band took twelve years to get around to putting out a new album, I figure I deserve some leeway. Besides, this isn’t an album that you can just grab ‘n’ go with an opinion; with near-infinite twists and turns, it requires time to digest and reflect. Hell, ‘Soul Catchers’ kicks it off and packs into six minutes a whole album’s worth of riffs, tempo-changes, curves, and detours. At times angular and noisy, at others, showcasing a more technical style.
Loping drums and noodling guitars dominate the opening of ‘Mother’ before scratchy discords crashes. The Shellac comparisons have been done to death, but are entirely appropriate, although there’s something that’s perhaps a shade more jazzy in the playing style here. This is highlighted by the instrumental interludes, which really do change the dynamic of the album as a whole, with some really nice piano work on display. But crucially, during the actual songs, it’s the drums that are front and centre, and batter hard at delivering stuttering, stop/start rhythms. It’s a timely reminder – well, after the arrival of To All Trains – of the impact Steve Albini had on alternative rock and recording methodologies. Before Albini – and still, generally – in rock music, the drums are background, keeping time, while the guitars dominated. His approach saw the drums take on a new level of importance, and expressive drumming, recorded right, alters the whole dynamic of a track. And there’s a lot of dynamic and some serious drumming on From Fire I Save The Flame. Every snare smash blasts the top off your head, and you feel like your in the room while the band are cranking this out live just feet from your face.
Again, another lesson from Albini: bands are often at their best live, when the energy and adrenaline are pumping and the heat and the blood are up, and to capture that on record is gold. From Fire I Save The Flame feels live: the performances are raw, unpolished, intense. That Steve is gone doesn’t really seem entirely credible right now, and the world – not just the world of music – will be so sadly lacking in his absence. But it’s clear that his legacy will endure, and endure. This album might not even exist without him, and certainly wouldn’t sound the way it does were it not for him, and the same is true of many releases now and in the future. This isn’t to detract from anything the band themselves have done here – and Three Second Kiss have reconvened to deliver something special – but, well, the point stands.
‘Garum’ lurches into noisier territory once more, reminding us why you’ll often find TSK mentioned alongside the Jesus Lizard – who have recently announced a new album after significantly longer than twelve years. It’s as pretty as a barroom brawl, spilling and staggering in all directions: the bass repeatedly punches you in the gut while the drums leave you dazed and with a split lip.
There’s sinewy, straining guitar galore on ‘Fuss’, before the final track, ‘Heart Full of Bodies’ grinds down to a slow-swinging crawl, before the growling bass and some thrashing drums whip up a climactic frenzy to draw the curtain quite dramatically on an album that’s heavy with dinge and dirt, unashamedly unsmooth, untamed, unprimed for radio.
From Fire I Save The Flame isn’t just a brilliant return, it’s a brilliant album in its own right, period. And landing as it does in between the Shellac album and the upcoming LP from the Jesus Lizard, 2024 is shaping up to be an outstanding year for quality noise music from bands many had considered dormant. It’s about time we had some good news, and this is some very good news indeed.
the Jesus Lizard, undeniably one of the most iconic and influential bands to emerge in the late 20th century, return with Rack, their first new album since 1998’s Blue, on Sept. 13 via Ipecac Recordings.
A preview of the 11-song album arrives today with the release of ‘Hide & Seek,’ a track David Yow describes as “a perky ditty about a witch who can’t behave, and it’s got nearly as many hooks as a Mike Tyson fight.” An accompanying video captures the foursome of Duane Denison, Mac McNeilly, David Wm. Sims, and Yow as they recorded the “ditty” with Producer Paul Allen at Nashville’s Audio Eagle Studio.
Check ‘Hide & Seek’ here:
“There are definitely some references to the past,” Denison says, in reference to the album, adding, “but it’s more as a point of departure: We don’t stay there.”
the Jesus Lizard reconvened in 2009 for a finite number of shows, and have spent the intervening years as both friends in close contact with one another, and touring bandmates. “We literally only made the record because we thought it would be fun to make the record,” Sims shares. With McNeilly highlighting the strong relationship amongst the musicians: “We are bonded by the music we make, and also by the respect we have for each other.”
The band has also announced tour dates, stretching well in to 2025, with more performances to come:
June 6 Nashville, TN Third Man Records SOLD OUT
June 8 Pomona, CA No Values
June 9 Garden Grove, CA Garden Amp
September 7 Raleigh, NC Hopscotch Music Festival
October 13 Las Vegas, NV Best Friends Forever Music Festival
After two decades of timeless records, Oklahoma City’s Traindodge continues their post-hardcore dynasty with the release of their eighth LP, The Alley Parade, due out on September 22, via Spartan Records.
Upon the release of the album’s second single ‘The New Low’, vocalist/guitarist Jason Smith says, “’The New Low’. It’s about seeing what you want to see in someone regardless of where it might lead you. Sometimes you find that you hold vastly different definitions of the same words you’re using with someone. Then gradually you realize you’ve been having conversations of pure insanity with them the entire time.”
Now this is a fine justification of why I don’t do end of year lists. This may or may not have made mi ne, because I simply haven’t had time to process or digest it, but it’s been out a month and a half and I’ve only just got my lugs around it, with only a week or so left of 2022 – and it’s one of those albums that slaps you around the skull and has that instant impact by virtue of its sheer force.
Their bio tells us that Athens-based ‘Mammock’s compositions stray from the typical rock forms, incorporating various elements from punk to jazz, post-hardcore and the nineties’ US noise rock scene. The quartet possesses the self-awareness and technical capabilities to carve their own sound and explore their character into finely tuned songs, which grab the listener from beginning to end.’
What it means is that they make a serious fucking racket and sound a lot like The Jesus Lizard, from the rib-rattling bass to the off-kilter, jarring guitars, and the crazed vocals. Some of the songs sound like they have some synths swirling around in the mix, but one suspects it’s just more guitar, run through a monster bank of effects. Overall, though, they seem to be more reliant on technique than trickery.
They formed in early 2018 by Giannis (guitar) and Klearhos (bass) with the addition of Vangelis (drums), they started out as an instrumental trio, before the addition of Andreas (vocals), and if it seems like a contradiction to remark that they feel like a coherent unit when cranking out so much jolting, angular discord, but that’s one of the key tricks or deceptions of music like this: it isn’t mere racket, and in fact requires real technical precision: those stuttering stops and starts, judders, jolts, changes of key and tempo require a great deal of skill, intuition, and of course, rehearsal.
They take many cues from Shelllac, too: the drums are way up in the mix – to the extent that they’re front and centre, something Shellac make a point of literally on stage, and replicate the sound on record, with the guitar providing more texture than tune, and the vocals half-buried beneath the cacophonic blur.
The last minute or so of ‘Dancing Song’ blasts away at a single chord that calls to mind Shellac’s ‘My Black Ass’ and ‘The Admiral’. The lumbering monster that is ‘Bats’ is a bit more metal, in the sludgy, stoner doom Melvins sense.
Stretching out to almost seven minutes, ‘Jasmine Skies’ blasts its way to the album’s mid-point, a wild, grunged-up metal beast with an extended atmospheric spoken-word mid-section which gives the lumbering black metal assault that emerges in the finale even greater impact.
If the semi-ambient ‘Interludio’ offers some brief respite, the ‘Boiling Frog’ brings choppy, driving grunge riffage and a real sense of agitation and anguish, and the album’s trajectory overall paves the way for an immense finish in the form of the seven-minute ‘Away from Them’ that roars away as it twists and turns at a hundred miles an hour.
Yes, Rust packs in a lot, and it packs it in tight and it packs it in hard.
Formed in 2018 over a mutual appreciation for ugly rock music, MUSCLE VEST, have been making waves across the London alt rock scene with their brand of abrasive sardonic noise rock.
Comprised of veterans of London’s music scene (Massacres, Lull, Thunder On The Left, Bourgeois & Maurice etc.) and taking influence from bands such as Pissed Jeans, Melvins, McLusky, The Jesus Lizard and Whores, MUSCLE VEST aim to reflect the struggle of the average person against an exploitative system within a crumbling state.
After 2020’s debut EP Human Resources – described as “leading the charge for noise rock in the UK” (gbhbl.com) – MUSCLE VEST return in 2021 with follow-up EP Live Laugh Loathe, encapsulating feelings of worthlessness, anxiety and desperation endemic to modern working culture.
Like its predecessor, Live Laugh Loathe was recorded, mixed and mastered by Wayne Adams (Petbrick, Big Lad, Death Pedals) at Bear Bites Horse Studio in London.
Recorded in the final week of October 2020 under the spectre of increasingly harsh lockdown restrictions, sophomore EP Live Laugh Loathe sees Muscle Vest following in its predecessor’s footsteps, exploring oppressive elements of modern society from morals-free corporatism to toxic masculinity, cults of personality and a dash of Lovecraftian horror.
‘Creepy Crawlie’ provides a taste of the EP, and you can stream the video here:
Aural Aggravation 