Goat is one of my favourite albums of the 1990s but yet somehow it took me years to listen to another one of their albums and more than a decade, if I’m not wrong, to make it through the whole discography. As usual, listening to a band’s entire discography after you’ve listened to one or two records a ton, and it isn’t/they aren’t the first, is a weird experience.
Their debut album very much captures everything that is great about them. Yow is yelling, speaking, howling – anything but singing, basically. And his voice is often distorted and also buried in the mix, at least compared to most recordings of the era. Denison has already sort of perfected his style, playing muscular but often knotty riffs (“Waxeater”!) that feel like he’s been influenced by surf music and country as much as punk. The rhythm section has tons of power behind it, with the bass sometimes assuming a bit of lead role when Denison is backing off. One of the things I like about this band is how aggressive and hard they sound without resorting to, like, palm-muting and blast drumming.
I have no idea what I would have felt about this album if it had been the first I hard heard. I assumed I would have loved it. But I feel pretty comfortable saying that the songs just aren’t remotely up to the standard of Goat. There are some pretty decent ones and they do some fun things with our expectations sonically, but Goat feels to me like a Greatest Hits collection in terms of how much catchier the music is, without losing any of its force or ferocity.
The selling point here is the band, their unique spin on post-hardcore – their sound is inimitable, I’d say. But it’s clear with hindsight that they could get much better. Again, I really don’t know what I would think coming at this the proper direction, or if I had somehow managed to hear it earlier than I heard Goat. (In 1990, I would have absolutely hated it, but I was a kid.) I do feel it’s unfair to say they just weren’t as good as their best album on their debut. And they do really sound like nobody else.
8/10
Read my reviews of 1990 albums or read all of my reviews of music by The Jesus Lizard.