The Jesus Lizard
The Electric Ballroom, Camden, London, January 11, 2025
There will be some present at Camden’s Electric Ballroom tonight who witnessed one of the Jesus Lizard’s most notorious London shows. At the Garage in September 1993, the Austin noise-rock masters’ scabrous singer-screamer David Yow – famed for varying degrees of nakedness onstage and the enthusiasm of his crowd-surfing – managed to kick holes in that venue’s ceiling. In 2025 things have changed – at the remodelled Garage, where the ceiling is now out of reach, and also with The Jesus Lizard.
Tonight Yow, 64, manages some admirably extended crowd-surfing. He also plays some of the show with his shirt unbuttoned. But he keeps the majority of his bodily particles where they belong. Historically, for him, that counts as sedate. In other respects, The Jesus Lizard are uncompromised. The post-hardcore attack of guitarist Duane Denison, bassist David Wm. Sims and drummer Mac McNeilly is as titanium-tough and gimlet-sharp as ever, whether lurching with the sick soundtrack swagger of What If? from 2024’s excellent Rack LP, or blasting through the straight punk ramalama of their 1989 debut single, Chrome. This is not band going gentle into that good night.
Yow’s abased lyrics require abased performances. In My Own Urine, he finds himself in a pool of same, plus, mysteriously, someone else’s blood. In Mouth Breather – dedicated tonight to the song’s producer, the late Steve Albini – he allows said character to house-sit, returning to find it “raining piss” in his basement and his friend dead in the kitchen. Severed limbs litter tonight’s closer, Monkey Trick. While you might suspect this sicko miasma could have got old at some point in the last 35 years, it’s the opposite. No-one wants to look into the dark this unflinchingly anymore.
It helps, of course, that the music is so splendid, the noise beautiful in its way – certainly undeniable. Introducing the band, Yow pretends to forget McNeilly’s name – perhaps he’s still being punished for his retirement from the line-up between 1996 and 2008 – but the drummer is a powerhouse, spidery limbs crashing down from great heights à la peak Dave Grohl. Denison is surgical, a dentist’s drill on Then Comes Dudley, another of five songs drawn from their classic 1991 album, Goat. Sims drives everything inexorably, like Tracy Pew in The Birthday Party or Stephen Hanley in The Fall.
“Put on your dancing shoes and take off your pants,” Yow orders the audience before the nasty funk perversion of Fly On The Wall, a highlight of their encore. It speaks to the inhibition immolation experiment that Jesus Lizard are here for – let’s see what happens to humans when the rules, even those of common decency, are removed. But luckily for us, this time, it’s advice he chooses not to follow.
Set List
Glamorous
Boilermaker
Puss
Seasick
Mouth Breather
Thumbscrews
My Own Urine
Grind
Nub
Hide & Seek
What If?
Chrome
Alexis Feels Sick
Gladiator
Then Comes Dudley