Down

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ALBUM INFORMATION

Total Tracks: 13   Total Length: 40:34

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Kevin O'Donnell

eMusic Contributor

Kevin O'Donnell has worked as an editor at Rolling Stone and SPIN and his writing on music, books and pop culture has been published in the Washington Post, NPR...more »

09.21.11
The Jesus Lizard, Down
Label: Touch And Go

These Austin, Texas-based hardcore terrorists were one of Kurt Cobain’s favorite bands — David Yow and Co. even teamed with Nirvana for the 1993 split single “Puss/Oh, The Guilt,” which scored the Jesus Lizard their highest charting single in the U.K. So their 1994 album Down, produced by Steve Albini, was the highest-profile of their career, yet the band never compromised their sound for attention. Over skeletal, atonal hardcore grooves, Yow yelps, shrieks, burps, and screams unintelligible lyrics, as if he’s in the throes of an Adderal-induced fever dream. Jesus Lizard would go on to sign with a major label and clean up their sound on 1996′s Shot — how an A&R guy would think this band had any commercial appeal is a total mystery — but Down captures the Lizard right before they took a shot at the big time.

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Get it soon

WhiskyNic

But honestly just a Great band and a great man. the albums aren't anywhere near as good as the show david Yow puts on but still something that should be heard.

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Down like the morning after

herrk

Down is a great record with some of the best songs the band ever recorded, tracks 1-6 are classic JL. Often criticized as a band with one song rehashed over and over again, they don't reinvent themselves here but do offer another worthy perspective on their well aimed collective paranoid psychosis. A great record for sweating out the return trip to your miserable hole. Enjoy with cocktails.

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that guys full of Junk ...

PBR72

Down is a fine album and you know it !

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Down

Mynameismalcolm

The name of this record pretty much says it all: The group was on its way downhill, and they knew it, and their longtime producer/friend Steve Albini knew it. "Down" marked the last time Albini and the Chicago noise-punk band worked together, and on their subsequent records, especially the also-appropriately named "Shot", you can really tell Albini's not there, and neither really is the band. Here, however, there are still some great, great songs, like "Destroy Before Reading," "Queen for a Day," "Countless Backs of Sad Losers" and "Fly on the Wall." On these songs in particular, they don't sound as if they're on the last legs; elsewhere, as on "Elegy" and "Din," they do. Which means this is their first record that isn't, song-for-song, a masterwork. But it's still better than what you're listening to right now.

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They Say All Media Guide

While it was regarded as something of a disappointment when it was first released in 1994, in retrospect, Down stands as the last really vital album from the Jesus Lizard. It lacks the same degree of bone-crushing force and sweaty psychosis that made Goat and Liar instant classics (the band seems to be aiming for a slightly more subtle approach this time out), and most of the songs take a bit longer to sink in. But bassist David Sims and drummer Mac McNeilly were still capable of connecting like Mike Tyson against a speed bag on the heavy tunes, Duane Denison’s sheets of chrome-plated guitar are as gloriously fragmented as ever, and there’s never been a rock vocalist before or since quite like David Yow. It was also the last Jesus Lizard album to benefit from Steve Albini’s spare, dry recording; if ever there was a band that didn’t take to a more “hands-on,” “user-friendly” production, it was the Jesus Lizard, and between Albini’s decision not to work with the group again after they signed to Capitol Records and the departure of drummer McNeilly, this group was never the same in the studio again. Liar was the greatest recorded moment for the Jesus Lizard, but Down captured one of the most powerful American bands of the 1990s in their last gasp of twisted glory. – Mark Deming

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