A quarter of a century is a long time, but with Rack you'd hardly think The Jesus Lizard had been away. It's instantly identifiable as them, and instantly likeable. Buzz review here.
Listening to the album takes me back to my one face-to-face encounter with them, in Nottingham in October 1998. The band's initial end may have been nigh, but David Yow was on feral form and I recall the microcosmic water cycle in operation in Rock City's Disco 2, whereby steam was rising from the rowdy crowd, condensing into droplets on the mirrored ceiling of the dancefloor and falling back down on the audience like sweaty rain. As with Fugazi, I feel as though I didn't fully appreciate what I was witnessing. Youth is wasted on the young etc etc.
To mark the album's release, Yow spoke to Patrick Clarke for the Quietus' Baker's Dozen feature. His picks can be roughly categorised as either British big-hitters (Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin. T-Rex), US punk/hardcore bands (Dickies, Fear) or deranged post-punk (The Birthday Party, Flipper). When he suggests that "the best three-band bill possible would be (in any order) AC/DC, Ramones and Motorhead" - "Zero fucking around!" - it's pretty much impossible to disagree, and there are some wise and touching words for The Jesus Lizard's producer and friend Steve Albini: "I'm glad Steve gave a public sort of expression of regret for some of the drastic insensitivities from his younger years. I miss him like crazy."
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