Releasing an album that comes with a concrete monolith is one way to grab peoples' attention. But for David Yow, on solo duties for the first time after years spent baiting audiences as the frontman of Scratch Acid and the Jesus Lizard, it's a minor footnote to a wildly unpredictable record. To say it's uncompromising would be correct, although somewhat redundant, as he hasn't ever dealt in half measures. But this is not the sound of a sweat-soaked Yow plunging into a crowd and rubbing his blubbery belly all over the faces in the front row; Instead, it's a studio creation, cut somewhere between the art-fun antics of the Residents, old horror movie soundtracks, classical leanings, a streak of digital noise, a burst of Spanish guitar, text messages translated by computer software, and a recording of Yow squeezing a cat.
Tonight You Look Like a Spider is an album that has been 15 years in the making, once destined to be released by Mike Patton's Ipecac, but ultimately coming out on the Joyful Noise label. Naturally, Yow's new home have heralded its release with a photo of him with jeans around his ankles, posed in front of a toilet. The picture hovers over a blurb that offers insights such as: "I named it Tonight You Look Like a Spider after a spider I saw one night." Don't look to Yow for any easy explanations for this stuff, but it's better that way, just left hanging out there for people to determine their own interpretation. It's mostly instrumental, alternately brilliant and terrible, sometimes focused, at other times hopelessly rambling. Yow would probably admit as much himself. "The record is kind of retarded in a lot of ways," he said in a recent podcast by Vish Khanna.
On cursory listens there might not appear to be much that ties this work to Yow's former persona as a drooling, babbling rock beast, but it's pulled from a similar sensibility. He admits to having no formal musical training or even knowing how chords work-- essentially, this is an album that's as psychotic as his live shows with the Jesus Lizard, both of which hinge on the premise that the less you know, the more demented you can get. Part of Yow's success as a vocalist and performer was because there was really no one like him; similarly, this album works best when he's fully committed to making a creation without peer. Its failings come when he edges toward the familiar, at times resembling a dollar store Scott Walker, stuck with MIDI presets in a rotting basement instead of large orchestras in an expansive studio.
For someone who worked so well with concision in his other bands, it's a surprise to find out that Yow works best over great lengths of time in his solo guise. The two 10-minute-plus tracks are the best pieces here, one heading off on a million tangents ("Opening Suite"), the other closeted in a gradually unfurling drone that resembles a slowed-down air raid siren ("Visualize This"). The rest feels like a mixture of Yow amusing himself, sometimes hitting on a strain of inspiration, but just as often tailing off into inconsequential meanderings when the ideas run dry. At its most playful it feels like an army of ringing alarm clocks pounding on your head ("Uncle"), or mirrors the kind of pithy spoken word rants Ann Magnuson would undertake in Bongwater ("Senator Robinson's Speech"). Of course, the track that comes closest to beauty, full of dark piano stabs spun through a spooky ambient fog, is called "Lawrence of a Labia".
Albums recorded over ample stretches of time often don't hold together well, and Tonight is no exception. Sometimes the sounds are horribly dated-- synth-induced slap bass sounds that border on the "Seinfeld"-ian, even a hint of Al Jourgensen's industrial emptiness in "Bleth My Thoul" (presumably some unspecified private joke Yow is inflicting on his audience). Although one of the strengths of this album is that it's clearly coming straight out of a void, oblivious to anything else around it, there's also a childlike wonder coupled with a decent understanding of the gruesome side of life. Yow's vocal work had that, too. In the times when he wasn't jumping into the audience at Jesus Lizard shows there was something decidedly creepy about him, a feeling of the paunchy uncle with whisky on his breath, cornering you and asking uncomfortable questions. Still, he doesn't quite see it that way. When asked about it on Khanna's podcast, Yow simply responded: "Am I scary? I’m just ugly."
