“Songs of my youth” selection of the day: Girls Against Boys, “She’s Lost Control” (Joy Division cover)
The Jesus Lizard, “Puss”
Nineties noise rockers The Jesus Lizard reunited last year to play a string of shows, and “Puss” seemed to crop up on the set list on a regular basis. The song first appeared on a split 7” single with Nirvana back in early 1993, which is the version you hear here.
Here you can watch a slightly older but no less rambunctious frontman David Yow menacingly belting the tune out at La Villette Sonique in May, 2009. “Get me something to stop the bleeding,” he moans over thudding bass and drums as the song opens. It only gets better from there.
As a New York Times scribe put it in his entertaining review of the band’s reunion show in New York last November:
Mr. Yow, no kind of natural singer, had to invent his voice. It’s all muted middle-range: nervous honks, pathetic moans, sudden belligerent shouts, always accompanied by a nearly blank facial expression. His physical language is contained, improvisational, swinging between extremes: he writhes and screams like Sean Penn’s famous scene in “Mystic River” — with Mr. Yow you always fill in the invisible cops holding him down — then flaps his wings serenely, or gives the crowd a fey, palms-out, fuggedaboutit wrist-wave.
