Yow couldn’t include his laughter when recounting a Parisian scatological mishap that impressed a portion of “Moto(R),” one in every of a number of hard-driving rockers on the album’s again half. (“I had had some French espresso, and I needed to poo,” he mentioned.) And discussing “Lord Godiva” — the one track on “Rack” with roots within the band’s ’90s period, which comes full with a fantastically beefy Sims bass solo — Yow highlighted the perverse misdeeds of its bloodthirsty protagonist. “They’re simply so silly and, I believe, actually humorous,” he mentioned.
As a lot as “Rack” reprises the time-tested Jesus Lizard formulation of pulpy lyrical filth matched with risky, menacing rock, it additionally reasserts that the band was much more versatile than thumbnail remembrances typically counsel. “What If?” is pure skin-crawling moodcraft, pushed by a cold-eyed Sims bass vamp, with Yow exhibiting off his sharpened dramatic chops as he monologues a couple of widow who seems to be “kinda loopy,” or worse. “Armistice Day” leans into downtempo doom-blues, offset by Yow’s forlorn-sounding croon and a sparse, piercing Denison lead that Yow mentioned “brings tears to my eyes.”
Whereas the LP has a extra polished sound than early Jesus Lizard albums, it maintains an admirable rawness that receded on the 2 data the band made with out Albini within the mid-to-late ’90s. Reached after Albini’s loss of life in Might, Yow mentioned that within the band’s early days, he “considered Steve nearly as a fifth member.” He praised the best way that Albini had rendered guitar, bass and drums every within the “absolute most intense attainable means,” and, his voice choking up, recalled a time when he and the engineer had been inseparable, typically spending whole days taking pictures pool collectively on the Chicago Billiard Cafe.
As documented in “Guide,” tensions later arose between the band and Albini, and the events wouldn’t work collectively once more. However Yow mentioned that he and the engineer “ended up kind of patching issues up.” He recalled a current textual content alternate the place Albini had informed him, with typical crude aptitude, that followers had been “going to only [expletive] themselves” once they discovered that the Jesus Lizard had made a brand new album.
Reflecting on “Rack,” Denison mentioned that regardless of his new standing as a senior citizen — just lately retired from a day job at a department of the Nashville Public Library, the guitarist is contemplating when he ought to start out amassing Social Safety — he was intent on capturing a sure punk-rock abandon. “I’d prefer to suppose it’s all the time been this steadiness between the sophistication” and “the non-sophisticated,” he mentioned, “simply the pure drive and mayhem.”
McNeilly cited the explosive opening of “Cover and Search,” which units the tone for what follows.
“It’s nearly like, OK, you’re on a journey now,” the drummer mentioned, “and also you’re not going to have the ability to get off.”
