The Jesus Lizard - David Yow

I’ll never forget the first time I heard the music of the iconic noise-rock band The Jesus Lizard — it was more than thirty years ago, thanks to my older brother Michael playing me their song “Seasick,” from the band’s second studio album, Goat, released in 1991 and produced by the legendary Steve Albini. That song blew my mind. It made me feel like I was actually inside of the tune itself, and that, like the narrator of the song, yowling about how he “can’t swim,” that I was somehow drowning in the music. Not in a scary way — in an empowering, visceral way. It’s a song I still go back to, and that album is one I go back to all the time. It was a thrill to get to ask David about that song, in particular, about working with Albini, and so much more. In this episode, David discusses his earliest creative inclinations as a visual artist, and as a music lover and musician, and how everything changed when he discovered punk rock at age twenty. We also delved into the making of the first new studio album by The Jesus Lizard in twenty-six years, their excellent, newly released LP Rack. Although he cites influences such as the Beatles and Queen and The Huns and Fear and Nick Cave’s band The Birthday Party, what David does is a thing unto itself. He is truly an inimitable performer and it was an honor to speak to him for this episode.