On The Jesus Lizard and the Pleasures of Being Called a C!@#$%$^#

David Yow is 49 years old. He wears jeans and a T-shirt. He’s half-bald. When he’s excited or pissed off—which is often—what remains of his stringy hair sticks in clumps to his neck and forehead. He spits a lot. If you’re lucky, he’ll call you a “cock-sucking shit-asser,” which in his book is a sign of endearment.

Seeing Yow and his band, The Jesus Lizard, live, is a revolting experience. It’s also one of the best shows I’ve seen all year. Despite his age, Yow is an overwhelmingly physical presence. His body writhes and contorts—seemingly against his will—to his band’s arty, angular post-punk. He’s willing to throw himself into the audience, head first, without a moment’s notice (see below). By the end of the band’s hour-and-a-half set at Manhattan’s Irving Plaza last week, Yow was a bloody, sweat-drenched mess.

Like the best stand-up comics, Yow is frighteningly adept at riling up his fans. He thanked his “New Jersey” audience last week, the same audience he had earlier mocked for not living in LA (where Yow now works as a graphic designer and small-time actor), he forced them to clap on command, he yelled at them to shut up—all of it eliciting a roar of boos and cheers in equal measure. He is also wickedly self-deprecating. When Yow sauntered back on stage for the first of two encores, he screamed: “Look at us, where like 65 years old and we’re the best band in the world!”

Well, maybe not the best in the world, but close, at least during the Chicago of the early 90s. The Jesus Lizard and their label, Touch and Go Records, largely defined the city’s rough and tumble underground scene. The quartet’s seminal records from 1990 to 1994—“Head,” “Goat,” “Liar,” and “Down,” all produced by Steve Albini—have just been reissued, thus providing the impetus for the reunion tour. (The band last played Irving Plaza in 1998.)

Those records and the tour are a welcome reminder of what indie rock used to sound like: arty but aggressive, stripped-down but not ascetic, physical but not athletic—just drums, bass, and guitar. The (mostly Brooklyn) bands that have come to define the genre—Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective, MGMT, Yeasayer, Dirty Projectors, etc. (the last garnering recent profiles in The New Yorker and New York magazine)—are all, in their own ways, strikingly different. To take a quick stylistic tour: There are oodles of synthesizers and digital effects, pop hooks and dance-ready beats, jazz chord structures and classical string arrangements. Most striking of all, vocals play a major, if not the central role—a clear break from the days when Albini would bury Yow under an avalanche of drums and guitar. Fans go to a Grizzly Bear show to hear Daniel Rossen and Ed Droste sing in gorgeous, choirboy harmony, not to marvel at Rossen’s virtuoso, jazz-inflected guitar playing.

Where The Jesus Lizard is sharp and trim, Grizzly Bear is thick and woozy. Where The Jesus Lizard is bleary-eyed, Animal Collective is starry-eyed. If Yow and his cronies were defined by their limits—three instruments, 10 strings, Yow’s mangy voice (imagine a drunk screaming outside your window)—today’s bands seem defined by their limitlessness, their willingness to try anything and everything once.

One thing they wouldn’t do, though, is call you a “cock-sucking shit-asser.” One thing they aren’t is punk. While I’m a fan of most of the Brooklyn set, and respect them all, I can’t help but think there’s something missing. Danger. If Animal Collective have an edge, I haven’t seen it. Pop music can and should be an intellectual exercise, but not at the expense of the physical, of something sexual, something treacherous.

Of course, there are still bands out there today with precisely that sensibility. There’s Toronto’s Fucked Up (if you’ve ever seen the band’s massive frontman, Pink Eyes, with his shirt off, you’ll know what I mean.) There’s the inimitable King Khan. There’s LA’s HEALTH and New Jersey’s Titus Andronicus. And many, many more. It’s nearly impossible for independent music, particularly these days, to be dominated by a single sound. And the truth is that Dirty Projectors, Animal Collective, and their ilk are really the ones moving the story ahead, the ones making the most out of the 21st century tools at their disposal. For that they should surely be congratulated. If they have anything to learn, it’s only the fun of a few hard-earned bloody noses.