Jónsi - Shiver - Review

I wish I had loved this more because a friend recommended it to me and it has basically almost all the genres I love. But I realized I was basically forcing myself to like it more than I actually do. It's still a great and quite unique album, don't get me wrong. But I listened to it a few times to try to get into it and only two songs really stood out in the end, and the rest are just okay.

To start with what I like about it, Jónsi's deeply personal lyrics are paired with his incredibly raw, almost sinister vocals. The best example of this is throughout Wildeye, one of the two amazing tracks here. The delivery on piercing lines like "You fill my mouth full of gravel" and "We went too far, my straight friend / There's no reason to pretend" feels so rough and pained. The production throughout the album is also really unique and unpredictable, as it constantly switches between ethereal ambience and glitchy post-industrial beats. Several other songs also have very unconventional structures that evoke abstract paintings. The obvious peak of the album is the hyper-pop banger "Salt Licorice" featuring Robyn (and Jónsi is really just in the background here). The whole song feels like a facade for something a lot darker, with shiny synths and Robyn's sugar-sweet vocals on the surface, but the creepy vocal effects and the heavy beats become apparent as you listen closer. The lyrics seem to be playing two moods in the same way, as they sing together about laughing and dancing in between more unsettling lines about their "Scandinavian pain".

On the rest of the songs aside from Wildeye and Salt Licorice, the vocals and production create some pretty stunning individual moments, but the songs feel lacking as whole pieces. Underneath the unique production/performances are either very typical art pop/ambient pop songwriting styles (Cannibal, Sumarið sem aldrei kom) that are pretty but don't really stand out at all from other artists in the genre, or abstract soundscapes that go almost nowhere because of a lack of a good chorus (Shiver, Kórall).

7/10

A Response to Criticism of Jandek Fans

I was writing a short review of San Francisco Friday by Jandek, and I was distracted by this incredibly ignorant and rude review on the RateYourMusic page for that particular album. Over the months I've spent looking for Jandek content in the depths of the Internet, I've found that a fair amount of people write criticisms of Jandek's cult following - about as many people write about this as there are Jandek fans themselves, it seems. They tend to be ridiculously trollish and wordy and focus on the fact that Jandek can't play guitar and seem to ignore any other aspect of his music. They criticize Jandek for the amount of albums he has and how his fans continue to buy them and go to his shows, giving him more money to continue making music and playing live more. 

My actual review of San Francisco Friday, a surprisingly bluesy Jandek live performance, was quite short, and I'll post it later. But I quickly went into a rebuttal to these horrible criticisms of Jandek fans because I was so angered by their tremendous ignorance and rudeness, so here is what I wrote. This writing is kind of very messy and clunky but I just really wanted to get my thoughts out. But I honestly hope the person who wrote that review doesn't find this because I'm not really ready to get into a fight with someone over the Internet again (those give me anxiety). 

I don’t know why a person on RYM chose this particular album (San Francisco Friday) to write a headass review where they talk about how Jandek keeps making sh*tty music and his fans eat it up, because this is definitely one of his most musical and most artistically valuable live albums. It’s okay not to like his music but it doesn’t make sense to say it doesn’t have artistic value and that his fans are wasting their time. It’s honestly rude and quite pathetic that someone could be that pissed about people simply enjoying the work of a musical artist and wanting to support them. 

The amount of creativity that goes into his lyrics and the variety of the instrumentation among the live shows is obviously enough to demonstrate the appeal of his music. On his live albums, he does everything from noisy rock to ambient spoken word to experimental acoustic folk to avant-garde jazz to accessible chamber folk to bluesy rock like this. Even if it’s mostly other musicians doing the work for his music, Jandek still shows a lot of creativity by assembling those musicians, writing the lyrics and making the foundation for the show, and allowing them to improvise and bring their own personality to his music. Jandek also writes about extremely personal subjects like depression, loneliness, and broken heartedness, and it would be ignorant to disregard that fans might seek solace in his artistic expressions regarding those topics. 

Obviously it’s subjective and you don’t have to say you enjoy any of it, but you can’t criticize his fans for going to his shows, buying his albums, and analyzing his music. The Jandek project is one of the most unique musical experiences in general because of his idiosyncratic musical and lyrical style and the evolution of his genres, and that’s pretty hard to doubt - are there any artists that truly sound like Jandek? Could you ever call anything a “Jandek copy”? And it’s pretty hard not to see any appeal at all to the depths of his live albums, especially when they include accessible bluesy gems like San Francisco Friday, and they include other hidden greatnesses like all those genres I just mentioned, and his lyrics. To boil down the content of Jandek’s music to “he can’t play guitar and no one told him to stop” is incredibly ignorant all those creative qualities/sources of appeal that I just mentioned, and shows that you just want to criticize people for enjoying something that you’re too lazy to look any deeper into. 

Jandek - The Door Behind - Review

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The Door Behind consists of more electric guitar songs; it’s more interesting than acoustic or bass so I’m pleased. The playing sounds really improvised and the notes constantly changed unexpectedly throughout each song. The instrumentation was somewhat engaging. I think I prefer it over the previous album. I actually really enjoyed the vocal delivery. It was very depressive and could be described as howling or wailing, and ranks above some of the previous few albums. Sometimes I have to stop and forget that every Jandek album essentially sounds the same, because when taken out of the context of the rest of the albums that sound just like this, The Door Behind is actually quite beautiful and heartbreaking on its own.

The lyrical content is very similar to The End of it All, with a major focus on relationships. “Do You Want Me” is simple and connects to the last song from the last album. “I’m in your world / And you’re in mine / You got one side / I got the other”. “Gate Strikes One” is about what I assume to be a recollection of Jandek’s first romantic experience. Another connection to the previous album is the constant use of the word “like” instead of “love”, which has a childlike connotation, because when you’re a kid in school you “like” your classmate, you don’t “have feelings” for them. The whole situation of the song is described in a simple, straightforward way that really sounds like the way a kid would describe that type of experience. I like the irony of it all.

“I’m Not That Good” is about the “desert calling me” and his fear surrounding what could be there. OK lyrics. “The Slow Burn” is confusing. It starts with what sounds like census questions or something about whether he’s married or not. He describes how he wants to be alone because someone has burned down his house. He says that when they’re gone, he’ll live in a new house, but he also slips in the line “You can be my princess”. There’s also the amusing line “I need to kill those squirrels running around in the top of my head” stuck in the middle, which aptly describes my confusion around this song. I like how indecisive and cranky it is, though.

“It’s Only You” and “Every Sentence” are both love songs, but something is very off-putting about them, including his musical performance. The former song features rapid, ominous guitar. The singer is quite obsessive about the woman he loves and quite literally worships the ground she walks on and the air she breathes, but it doesn’t sound like the love is returned (“And love me, I love you”). The individual lyrics are very romantic, but they just make me worry that something is amiss behind the scene. 

I like that the lyrics continue the story from the last album. It’s very similar to it too, but slightly better (not “great” by any means, though). I also just really like the depressing musical style in general, even if it’s pretty much the same thing on every album.

6.8/10

Essential album?: No

Essential songs: 

The Slow Burn

Jandek - The End of It All - Review

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The bass phase was short-lived (or so it appears). The End of It All opens with a gentle electric guitar strum (haven’t heard that in about 16 albums, actually), and is similar in style to the solo acoustic albums, but with slightly different playing. I can’t quite put my finger on what’s different about it, but it might be that there’s slightly less rhythm and more abstraction, and the mixing feels more intimate (it reminds me of my own home recordings on my electric, and I actually have never felt that with an artist before - I’m convinced I’m playing the electric wrong or something). I can’t help but wish he would make another “European Jewel” instead of these meandering guitar solos, though. The vocal delivery sounds kind of exhausted and uncomfortable rather than depressed or crazy - not his best - although a few moments are more manic.

The 20 minute opening track “One of Those Moments” is about a relationship, but I find it very hard to follow. However, there are a few lines that you can pick out and relate to, which I find fascinating because Jandek lyrics are typically more about the bigger picture than the moments. I like how it ends. 

“You told everybody you liked me

You made me say I liked you

All right so you had to pull me out of me

I was so deeply buried

I needed your air

And now I feel so alive

I don’t see anything different

It must be you, I accept that

We’ll see where it leads to

If you want to touch me I wouldn’t mind

It doesn’t happen too often, this kind of thing”

“I Hadn’t Been There Before” sounds like it’s about the same relationship and it involves a very anxious description about how dangerous entering the relationship was and how it messed up his head, despite how he’s happy (or maybe it’s the woman who’s happy). Haunting song. 

“They Don’t Matter at All” continues many of the same themes and describes the singer not knowing what his lover really thinks and if she really wants to be with him deep down, because he’s the one who does most of the talking. That strikes me because, in these lyrics, we truly don’t get to see the other side of the story. 

“I Met You” is easy to follow, and I find it endearing despite the eerie soundscape. The lyrics are about the singer hoping he can figure out what to do in the relationship so they can both feel lost in each other in the same way. The lyrics’ beauty speaks for itself. Again, lots of lines that still work out of context here, which I find rare for Jandek. 

“I don’t know if there’s just the right amount

But I hope I can figure it out

And give you just the right amount so that you lose yourself

And become a part of my reality

I got a world, I found you on the periphery

Somehow I pulled you in

Now that you’re here, tell me

Is it the best place you ever know

Because I’m at the best place I ever knew

And it’s just after I met you”

I like the lyrics on this one. They’re straightforward and they connect throughout the whole album. The musicianship is ok, I’m honestly glad we’ve progressed from the bass playing to something a little bit more tasteful.

6.7/10

Essential album?: No

Essential songs:

I Met You

Jandek - Shadow of Leaves - Review

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Besides a few exceptions from his later era, the only human being to ever appear on Jandek album covers was Sterling Smith himself. On some albums he makes this concept of self-portraiture extremely obvious, either by zooming in very close on his face so no one else can be seen (i.e. Chair Beside a Window) or obviously photoshopping out the background of the picture entirely (i.e. London Residency). Some very astute fans noticed that the trees on the cover of Shadow of Leaves repeat themselves, suggesting something was edited out of the photo. The lack of any other faces among the multitudes of covers really emphasizes the theme of loneliness in Jandek's music; but also, the album covers with his face are rather revealing for a man who's a self-proclaimed recluse and never reveals any information about himself. 

Shadow of Leaves continues the unplugged bass playing. Either the tuning of the bass or the playing technique seems to have changed, because many of the strums have a warped quality to them, which kept it slightly fresh, but not by much. The album was overall very hypnotic, and I enjoyed listening to it while on a sweltering-hot walk in the park, but it’s not necessarily that great or notable.

The 29-minute title track takes up the vast majority of the album. The vocal delivery is anxious and sometimes intense, similar to the previous acoustic period, but not as wholly so as on albums such as I Threw You Away. I was pleasantly surprised as I re-read the lyrics on this track because it’s one of the most poignant stories I’ve ever heard on a Jandek song. It describes Jandek’s experience with a dead or dying romantic partner throughout their lives. My interpretation of the beginning is that the partner has lost some ability to function and Jandek is willing to help her no matter what. It transitions to fragmented reminiscences of the times they spent together, which moves fast from images of walking together to drinking in the rain among other scenarios. He questions the permanence of what they had as he reveals his lover is dead, and he visits her grave and imagines being in heaven together. The song is so personal and specific that I genuinely feel sorry for him, and it would be hard to believe it’s not based on a true story. The constant themes of death within Jandek lyrics would lead me to believe so. Even “Down in a Mirror”, one of the most important tracks from his early era, describes being haunted by a ghost of a dead lover. My favorite aspects of the title track are Jandek’s devotion to his lover’s wellbeing, and his acknowledgements of thankfulness and hope.

Two shorter tracks make up the rest of the album. The musical technique is the same. “Find Me Again” is, to me, about Jandek describing how good he is at hide-and-seek. The song may be related to his reclusive nature and his career and how he never lets anyone know anything about him. 

“I Give You Me” sounds like Jandek giving an elevator pitch about himself to someone who’s about to break up with him to convince them not to leave him. It’s interesting, but it feels very shallow. A few lines continue a theme of weirdly sexual imagery that first appeared in the middle of “Shadow of Leaves”.

This is closer in quality to the spoken word albums. I wish there were more tracks, honestly. The title track has some of his finest poetry, but is too long to replay, and the other two tracks are just alright.

6.5/10

Essential album?: No

Jandek - The Gone Wait - Review

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On The Gone Wait, Jandek has abandoned the acoustic guitar for an unplugged bass guitar. The strumming and picking of the bass is similar to his acoustic, but the tuning feels even more perplexing, keyless, and even less melodic than the guitar tuning. That gave this album a really unique, surreal feeling that left me a little more intrigued than the last few acoustic albums. The bass technique is mostly repetitive, but it starts to pick up a bit in the second half of the album, becoming more rhythmic/percussionist at times, particularly on one section during “I Was a King”. The vocal delivery is toned down here. It’s more similar to his spoken word era than the previous acoustic era. 

“I Went to Hell” is about not knowing if the one you love is going to hell or heaven, but wanting to be with them wherever they are. There are themes of reincarnation, with dying and being reborn in someone’s arms. “We use our bodies to describe what we feel” is a very memorable repeated line. 

“I See the Open Door” reminds me of the track “The Place”, but not as interesting. It describes hesitation surrounding entering an open door and not being able to go back.

“I Was a King” is an introspective, stream-of-consciousness song that has a common theme of a desire for power and control, and an ambiguous relationship with another during Jandek’s childhood.

“I Just Might Go Now” is very abstract and has so many themes that it’s hard to summarize in a sentence. It deals with not having a body, wanting someone else’s body, and waiting for that person to come so they can have a house together.

“I Found the Right Change” describes sitting in a front room where nobody else stays and getting to decide what passes through and what doesn’t. It’s likely a metaphor for something human. I’m noticing a big theme in recent Jandek albums of houses and rooms representing something greater and more inherent to the human experience. There are also a lot of themes of death and the loss of a body.

Very interesting lyrics on this one, but not as good or straightforward as The Place. I like the bass playing so far, but I don’t know if I can take another whole album of it. 

7/10

Essential album?: No. If you’re interested in hearing a “Jandek plus bass guitar” album, my pick would be Raining Down Diamonds.

Essential songs:

I Went to Hell

Jandek - The Place - Review

https://corwoodindustries.com/product/0772/

The Place is a similar album to The Humility of Pain. There’s nothing really interesting going on with the guitar, it’s a lot of the same stuff. The vocal delivery is good, although I feel like it’s starting to get old from the initial shock the new style gave on I Threw You Away. The final track “The Stumble” has the most dissonant and disorienting harmonica I've ever heard Jandek play, so it’s probably the best song on here. There aren’t many tracks, so I'll try to talk about the lyrics of each one, since that’s the only remaining feature to really discuss. 

“The Picture” is a philosophical song that questions how we move, how we communicate, how we construct time, and how everything is always moving and coming and going. It’s very abstract and full of wisdom.

“The Place” is more straightforward and easier to follow. It’s about Jandek looking for a key to a place that he’s left unchanged, and he wants everything to be exactly the way he left it, but he doesn’t actually know what’s inside. It’s a very strange metaphorical concept indeed. I think the message is that we tend to fear change, but our tendency for curiosity kills the possibility for stability. 

“The Highway” is also kind of straightforward, but very wise and abstract. The story seems to be about Jandek waking up from a near-death experience after falling in a chasm in the road and feeling physically and mentally scattered and confused. He worries about falling in the chasm again and waking up in another body or another place, or as nothing at all. I think it says a lot about how traumatic experiences affect us and change our decision making. 

I imagine “The Answer” is about a dream that includes an ancient face, a flashlight without a hand, an unknown person, and a lot of other surreal imagery that seems to just be an imaginary journey. Perhaps it means something, but it seems like nonsense to me. Edit: After reading another listener's interpretation, I think it’s more about Jandek hearing someone outside the door and having a bunch of imaginations about who it could be instead of answering the door. 

“The Stumble” has some beautiful lines, but the subject matter is hard to pinpoint. The lyrics talk of times and places shifting. The one pattern I can identify throughout the lines is how he can still accomplish what he needs, even if his legs become impaired or broken. There are many things to take away from this song, but what I get out of it is that physical ability is not a representation of the true self.

Overall, I like the lyrics and I liked interpreting them. They feel fresh and new. The music itself was decent but nothing I haven’t heard before. 

7/10

Essential album?: Maybe

Essential songs:

The Place

The Stumble

 

Jandek - The Humility of Pain - Review

The Humility of Pain is very similar to I Threw You Away, and I'm having a hard time deciding the score for this album because it’s almost as good, but I think I'll give it a score a little bit lower because it’s missing some of the things that made I Threw You Away great, and the lyrics aren’t as straightforward or relatable here. The vocals are still howling and despairing, like a cry for help, and the guitar is pretty much the same, but there’s less reverb on this one. There are no harmonica parts, but I do still feel that his vocal performance is very strong and makes this era a lot more interesting than some of the early acoustic records, partly because of how dramatic the vocals are and how certain words and phrases get more emphasis and become more memorable. 

The lyrics on this album feel less introspective and are more like a message to someone else. Jandek seems to be giving advice to someone to stay out of trouble on the title track, for instance. “I Want to Look In” is indecipherable, but it has a memorable verse: 

We’ll walk the spectrum

With lights on the walls

The floors are dead now

And that makes them alive

They love you so much

How could you turn away?

“I Can’t Leave a Clue” is a more optimistic song with Jandek hoping for a miracle and wanting to erase “what he did” in his past. “Share My Life” is straightforward and it’s about the protagonist searching for a soulmate. I like these lyrics a lot - some of the best on the album - although of course Jandek’s desperate delivery gives everything a different meaning. 

You’re missing somebody

You’re missing me

There’s nothing to weigh you down

I don’t have a past

Let’s make the clock disappear

There’s only one thing to see

You’re missing somebody

You’re missing me

“You Know You Need” seems to be “advice” again. I like the metaphor of cleaning out the house and taking out the things you don’t want as a representation of being your true self. The protagonist talks about his relationship with the addressee and how they should appreciate his presence more, but not saying that outright. Certain details, like a friend that he’d die for, are mentioned. It feels very personal; it reminds me of my lyrics in that way, in that it’s ultra specific about a person, but vague enough that someone who doesn’t know about the situation can’t exactly interpret it spot-on. It’s true that a lot of Jandek lyrics feel like something that’s too personal to be listened to. Although, I'm not sure how I feel about “the refrigerator is dead and gone” as a closing line. Maybe it’s genius?

While there are plenty of great moments on this album, it overall doesn’t measure up to its predecessor I Threw You Away in terms of lyrics, memorable moments, and musicality, but it’s certainly still a pretty great Jandek album and I guess I'm looking forward to what this era brings next. 

7/10

Essential album?: No

Essential songs:

Share My Life

Jandek - I Threw You Away - Review

Finally, a musical album again. I Threw You Away is a solo acoustic effort, but it’s unlike anything I've heard before from Jandek. The guitar playing is in an alternate tuning with not a lot of variety, but the playing is intense and rhythmic with a lot of dramatic pauses. There is also quite a lot of reverb on the guitar and the vocals, giving the whole album a very spacious vibe, as if you’re far away from Jandek in a large room. A harmonica comes in about halfway through the album, and it’s about as key-less as his guitar playing. I don’t know if it’s any more dissonant or hopeless than past Jandek harmonica playing, but it feels like that to me. 

Finally, the most notable and perhaps the best aspect of this album is Jandek’s vocals. His voice has changed A LOT from the last time we heard him sing. It’s nearly unrecognizable, but after listening to the spoken word albums, it’s believable that it’s the same person. I’ll miss his old voice, but there’s a lot to like about the new kind of vocals here too. Jandek simply HOWLS nearly every line in such a despairing tone. The repetitions of “black” on “Blues Turned Black” is the best example of this; I can’t help but think of “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” by Patty Waters when I hear it. 

The lyrics on this album are great too. They are starkly and unabashedly depressed, lonely, and painful. They’re difficult to read; they reference self-harm and numbness of feeling. On “Frozen Beauty”, he mourns the death of a loved one, although lines such as “I took your life / Put it in a box” suggest he has something to do with their death. “The World Stops” is less depressing and describes a trip back to familiarity, where one can finally experience quiet calmness. It’s a satisfying ending to the lyrical themes. The songs on this album are samey, but it’s overall a good experience and certainly surpasses much of his early acoustic material. 

8/10

Essential album?: Yes

Essential songs:

Blues Turned Black*

Jandek - Worthless Recluse - Review

 Another spoken word album, but Worthless Recluse is a little bit different. The tone is overall very different, both figuratively and audibly. The delivery is very serious and mostly monotone, and at times sounds like a genuine conversation or an audiobook, really, instead of the poetic, sing-songy delivery from the previous 2 albums. I’m also glad that there’s nothing like “I Need Your Life” or those half hour songs here; the songs don’t drag on at all and there’s barely any monotonous repetition (if any at all), which means they explore their topics much more concisely yet deeply. I also feel like the short stories were more snappy, realistic, and easier to follow than the ones on This Narrow Road. 

The lyrics are overall very depressing and I feel like it goes without saying that they’re lonely. “Out of the Cave”, with its imagery of the city scenery and Jandek’s story of travelling which includes having “slept in a parked bus”, makes me think Jandek has experienced being homeless before. 

“Interlude” introduces another character that the protagonist has a complicated relationship with, who doesn’t seem to want to notice him.

I love “Aimless Breeze” and its message of the fleeting nature of time, which can’t be organized in the way we do. 

“I know the sun will come and go again

The moon and stars will shine

Why should I not notice?

I don’t know

Time seems so capsulized

Drifting in an aimless breeze

Like the fallen leaves

Like wood out on the lake”

“You Wake Up Deadmen” describes the other character “collecting” dead men in a trash barrel through sex and refuses to acknowledge the protagonist. It hurts to read about. 

“Worthless Recluse” is the 17 minute centerpiece of the album and is about the protagonist trying to understand if there is happiness, if there is something worth it about going outside in the world and embracing money and material possessions. He even hates going to the supermarket to get food to eat, and having to eat feels like a “weakness”. He describes a dream that’s more interesting than life, and getting caught up with the cops whenever he goes outside. The theme of time reappears where he doesn’t want to keep up with the schedules of life: “I wanna be where no time is the wrong time”. Jandek spews self-hatred, but declares he’s not strong enough to kill himself or disappear. He’s stuck in a dream, and feels like he’s “supernatural”, despite a “human” part of him that wants money and possessions. The song ends with him describing how all he cares about is “taking the big step into God’s eye”. The song is simply a masterpiece full of profound wisdom. 

Fans gave this album the most praise out of the spoken word albums, and I have to say my expectations were about met. I think the title track especially, and most of the others, are strikingly beautiful, albeit having little replay value. I know I said something in the last review about spoken word not being enjoyable to listen to, but this one is different because Jandek is no longer doing that weird, silly, stretched-out delivery that makes me uncomfortable (for the most part; he does it a little on the last tracks here), so I think his voice was significantly more calming to listen to here. I might listen to it again because the lyrics really require your whole attention and you have to read them as you listen.

8/10

Essential album?: Yes

Essential songs:

Worthless Recluse

Jandek - This Narrow Road - Review

Another spoken word album. I don’t really want to go into that much detail because there’s a LOT to unpack with the lyrics and I don’t think I could possibly comprehend all of This Narrow Road after one passive listen. The first song “One Last Chance” is half an hour long and is basically the same pattern as PMDOTP. I feel like it also has a lot of the same themes. The song is about how badly Jandek wants to be good and he’s talking to someone who can help give him strength to defeat the bad. He doesn’t really get that into what good and bad means, and the whole thing has a sarcastic tone. While it can be interpreted as a sort of prayer that Jandek made for himself to become a better person, it also feels like a satire on the way that the world and the media perpetuate the idea that we have to be good people and destroy the bad in ourselves when everything doesn’t really have a clear-cut definition of good or bad and sometimes following the rules isn’t the right thing to do. I believe Jandek touched on this too by mentioning that the idea of good can be different from person to person. However, this song is far from perfect because the sarcasm’s effect definitely wore off after 30 times of Jandek saying some variation of “I wanna be good, I wanna defeat the bad”. 

The rest of the album has much shorter tracks, and it’s a huge improvement from the last album - the imagery is much more complex, and there is less repetition. It’s less talking and more straight up poetry, similar to Jandek’s early lyrics. As I said, I can’t possibly comprehend all this poetry, but “The Name I Had”, “Pieces of Place”, “Ten O'Clock Shadows”, and “I Knew About Them” are all highlights. However, they weren’t nearly as easy to follow as the 20+ minute songs because their stories and imagery progressed a lot faster. I don’t want to say they should be longer, because the 20+ minute songs are really hard to sit through, but perhaps they don’t explore their topics enough to digest easily. But then again, who said it has to be easy to digest; I'm just being dumb right now. I definitely need to spend some time to read through it again and pick out my favorite lines.

Jandek’s delivery throughout the album is almost always sing-songy, but not enough to sound the same as his voice when he’s actually singing. I appreciate that there’s some kind of melody sometimes, but honestly it’s a 56 minute spoken word album without accompaniment, of course it’s extremely inaccessible and difficult to sit through. I know you could argue that it’s essentially the same thing as Ready for the House and Six and Six, which I gave positive scores to, but at least those have guitar and pseudo-singing and they have a little replay value. There are things I love about the lyrics on This Narrow Road, but I can’t give it anything higher than a 6 with my whole chest because while it’s artistic, it’s simply not genuinely enjoyable to listen to. I don’t know if I'll ever listen to it all the way through again, I'm just going to read the lyrics. I think that means it’s not good music. 

6/10

Essential album?: No

Jandek - Put My Dream on This Planet - Review

Well, we finally made it here: Put My Dream on This Planet. Jandek’s music has completely deteriorated to being just spoken word, without accompaniment, and the two main tracks are over 20 minutes long. It’s really hard to come up with a rating for this because it’s hard to tell how much I actually enjoyed this. I was honestly a little bit disappointed with it, because a lot of people left really positive reviews on how enlightening, engaging, and humorous this could be, but I truly think Jandek has done better poems before. I didn’t laugh once throughout the whole thing either, or find it funny at all really. Jandek does do some really weird voices and strange inflections, but they just weird me out if anything instead of making me laugh. The themes throughout the two main songs can get extremely repetitive. 

“I Need Your Life” is about the narrator being lonely, slipping and suffering, and begging the addressee, the object of his affections, to give him their life, and let him “win” because he’s fixated on being a good person. It’s an interesting story, and the repeated phrases have a similar rhythm, creating a “chorus” of sorts (“give me your life”, “let me up”, “let me win”), but it seriously doesn’t do much for its 28 minute run time. Of course, there are great moments, and the overall message can be powerful, but I feel like the individual moments don’t even measure up to Jandek’s greatest lines and many of the moments are just plain stupid. 

Next, “It’s Your House” is about Jandek describing his dream house in great detail, down to the materials he wants to build it with, and repeatedly stating he’s “ready for the house”. It sure was interesting to get a reference to his very first album, but I cringed almost every time he said it because he dragged every syllable out to an unnecessary degree. He declares that the addressee has the power to let him live in his house and that “it’s your house” and that even if they don’t let him, he’ll live in it with his mind. I suppose I liked this track more than the first one because it feels like he’s come full circle and he’s confidently declaring his identity. It had a lot of the same problems as the first track, though, because of its extensive length, its repetitiveness, and pointless details such as the several minutes of the song dedicated to describing the materials the house is made of. 

“Since I Went Outside” is an insignificant minute-long song about going outside in the cold, and then that’s the album. I know I was negative about the poems above, but I have to say while the content of this album was frustrating, I think the whole experience of it was worthwhile. It shows a whole new side of Jandek, one that feels more mature and self-aware, yet still extremely haunting. His voice feels empty as it always does, yet confident, and I kept comparing it to his singing voice in my head. I’ve always found his voice somewhat calming, and relatable, if a voice itself can be such a thing. The silent pauses, the lo-fi quality of the recording, and the background sounds that occasionally played (sounds like rain or construction or something) could be terrifying. No one else could make such an album because no one would write about such things or deliver it in such a way, and it manages to be authentically Jandek, yet at the same time something entirely new for him. 

5.5/10

Essential album?: Maybe

Jandek - The Beginning - Review and Project Update

Okay, I think I need a big change of plans for my Jandek review project. 

First, I'm not going to post the reviews in the order that I first listened to the albums anymore. I find that I keep having to rewrite my sloppy reviews from a year ago if I actually try to go in that order. However, I have tons and tons of actually finished reviews just sitting in the vault that I want to get over with already, so I'm just going to post a bunch of those at once even if they're not in order.

Second, I unfortunately don't think my schedule is going to allow me to review every single album anymore. I will definitely still listen to all of his albums, though, so I can make some charts/guides for new Jandek fans. Also, I'll write out the lyrics for any albums that don't have lyrics online. I will definitely prioritize finishing reviews of albums that I rate at least an 8 or albums that are just generally interesting. 

Anyway, here's my review of Jandek's album The Beginning (1999). 

The Beginning definitely freshens up the repetitive album formula that we’ve been hearing for a while now. It starts with “It’s February”, which would be unremarkable in the middle of any other album, but I think it’s a perfect opener to this one, especially if you kinda know what you’re in for. “You Standing There” is a rework of the same song from New Town, and it’s much better. It’s faster and more complex, but nothing I haven’t heard before. 

The next two are more of the rhythmic, atonal plucking similar to the other albums. “Moving Slow” has an unusually dissonant ending but I don’t see it as very significant. “Falling Down Deep” was a big surprise because it’s actually melodic fingerpicking and sounds challenging to play. This is basically what I expected when I first heard that Jandek used alternate tunings (but before I actually listened to any of the songs), before I learned that he mostly just strummed with open tunings. I like how the song hints at usual melody progressions, but defies your expectations every time. Definitely one of the best on this album, and from this 90s era in general. The lyrics are about alcoholism and falling deep into depression, and it makes me sad. 

“Lonesome Bridge” has a typical guitar part, but I really enjoyed Jandek’s passionate and off-key (do these songs have a key?) vocal performance about a man who apparently chooses to be homeless. “A Dozen Drops” sounds really lo-fi and reminds me of “Down in a Mirror”. The lyrics quote 3 older Jandek songs - “Nancy Sings” (whose lyrics have been repeated a lot throughout the discography), “You’re Not Even Alive” (from Twelfth Apostle), and “God Came Between Us). The vocal delivery was a lot quieter and more timid than the original songs they came from, and feels very meaningful. The song somehow feels like Jandek’s overview of his art and, well, his memories (he really pours his whole self out into these songs) before he goes completely insane on what follows. The song goes on for a few minutes as an instrumental, which isn’t that interesting, but a little bittersweet in that it’s the last Jandek guitar plucking we’ll hear for a while.

Finally, we get to the last song, the title track, 15 minutes long. Jandek’s 26th album (or something, I'm not keeping count, I dunno) and he is 54 years old and he finally records himself playing piano and it sounds like a toddler trying to play a piano which has not been tuned in centuries. It actually sounds like ME trying to improvise on piano (which I do sometimes, yes) and I don’t know jack about playing piano properly. While the technique sounds untrained, the emotion within the song is very genuine. I can say that while the song may have been easy to make, I don’t think anyone else in the world could or would have made it, and it’s one of the most emotionally stirring pieces in the Jandek discography so far. The high notes feel like glass or ice, and the low notes feel like the cacophonies of hell. It can get quite disturbing or shocking at times. I did have a fun time imagining a middle aged man playing the piano so passionately and intensely, yet not knowing how to play in a trained way. I could choose to hate this song, but I'm going to choose to love it instead. And I think that’s how I'm going to feel about this album too. What a concept. 

7.8/10

Essential album?: Yes

Essential songs:

Falling Down Deep*

A Dozen Drops

The Beginning*

Jandek - Foreign Keys - Review

Foreign Keys is the predecessor to Telegraph Melts, the first to feature this particular style from Jandek (no wave-esque noise rock with a full band), and it’s almost as good. Perhaps the main difference between the two albums is that Foreign Keys has more actual songlike structures instead of strange abstraction and it’s not as disturbing. For some reason I was so underwhelmed with this on my first listen that I didn’t even write a proper review, but as I revisited this while I was going through the meandering 90s and 00s Jandek albums, I realized there is actually a lot of fire stuff here. 

The first half of the album isn’t that memorable, though. It features Jandek singing on top of chaotic noisy rock instrumentals. The style is closer to The Rocks Crumble here. His vocal delivery is kind of humorous and sassy or maybe aggressive at times (the repetition of the title on “Lost Cause” is kind of iconic) but otherwise it’s really just The Rocks Crumble, part 2 because of the awkward instrumentation and repetitive style. 

The second half is where things really get good. The first return of Nancy! And oh my goodness, what a return. “Needs No Sun” is one of the catchiest and grooviest songs I’ve ever heard from Jandek. Her vocals are so much more powerful than what I remember from “Nancy Sings”. I like the off-key variations of the basic melody that they do on the vocals, guitar, and bass to convey a sort of dark wrongness. The grooviness of the song also hides a very sophisticated poem written in couplets. I can’t quite summarize what’s happening here, but I’m impressed that such a rocking song can disguise lyrics like “A bird flies home to you today / He needs no sun to see the way / He did his best in years untold / Living in the dying cold / Fell into a hole so deep / Lay down there his soul to keep”. Nancy’s singing is really good on the following tracks too, especially “Some of Your Peace” with the “PEEEEACE!!!” part. Love the instrumental on that one too. 

“Ballad of Robert” is the first prototype for the disturbance from Telegraph Melts where we first hear the scary male singer on the album tell a “horror story” about a man named Robert who suffers from mental issues who lives at the halfway house. He uses his deep droning voice throughout the song, and escalates to full-on-screaming toward the end, and it freaks me out. 

The final song, “River to Madrid”, is the main thing I love about this album. Really. It’s probably one of my top 10 Jandek songs in general and I’m always returning to it. It first caught my attention because it’s a proper duet between Nancy and the scary male vocalist (or maybe a different guy that only ever appears once? Hell if I know). They sing together a lot, which finally shows some aspect of rehearsal on these chaotic songs, and they actually harmonize with each other. Harmonies on a Jandek album? I can hardly believe it. The repetitions of “Well that’s the Spanish in me!” and other lines are actually catchy enough to get stuck in my head often. The instrumental is awkward and disjointed throughout as usual, but there are a few moments with the guitar and bass that really stand out and work with the melody of the vocals. What a legendary banger of a song. 

While “Needs No Sun” and especially “River to Madrid” are some of Jandek’s finest songs, I almost never return to the rest of the album. It’s still decent, though, and it set the stage for the variety and higher artistic vision that would come on Telegraph Melts. When it comes to the early noise rock band Jandek albums, I would say Telegraph Melts > Foreign Keys > Modern Dances (and I don’t care much for the others). 

7/10

Essential album?: Yes

Essential songs:

Needs No Sun*

Some of Your Peace

Ballad of Robert

River to Madrid*

Mental Illness Art Critique

This is an essay I wrote for my Psychology class a few months ago where I wrote about some artists I like. Here's the prompt. Typos and awkwardness in the following prompt are thanks to my teacher.

Critique three songs, writings, and/or pieces of art produced by somebody diagnosed with mental illness. The art and songs can be from different artists and your entry can contain a combination of both art, writings, and songs. Your entry must contain a link to the art and songs however. In your critique discuss how you think the art/writing/music is either inspired from or completely separate from the persons struggle with mental health issues.

Mental Illness Art Critique

Daniel Johnston - Some Things Last A Long Time (1990) 

Daniel Johnston was a singer-songwriter who listeners often described as an “outsider” artist due to the self-produced, amateur, childlike qualities of his music, most of which was distributed through giving homemade tapes to people he met. Johnston was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and his feelings emerging from his mental illness often show themselves starkly in his deeply personal songs. Johnston self-produced and home-recorded several records until his eleventh album, 1990, one of his most famous albums, on which this heartfelt song “Some Things Last A Long Time” can be heard. The album was Johnston’s first to have studio-recorded tracks and live recordings included on it. Johnston was a big fan of The Beatles, whom he wrote a few songs about on his other albums. The heart-stirring, catchy piano melody and sentimental lyrics are certainly reminiscent of a simpler version of Beatles songs such as “Let It Be”. The vague lyrics, which are about the lasting memories of time spent with a friend, are simple enough for any listener to relate to, but are still specific enough to fit someone specific in Daniel’s life. Lyrics such as “Your picture is still on my wall” and “The red is strong, the blue is pure” recall the album cover, which depicts Johnston standing beside a painting of his own creation that he hung up, with blue and red hues across the cover. While many of Johnston’s songs do deal with his mental illness quite directly, “Some Things Last A Long Time” is one of his most “professional” sounding and broadly relatable songs that may not particularly be informed by his experiences with schizophrenia and BPD. Some listeners may argue that the only appeal to Johnston’s music is how amateur it sounds due to mental illness’s effect on him, but I disagree. I think that this song is clear evidence that Johnston is a genuinely gifted melody craftsman and lyricist, and this song can be enjoyed whether he was mentally ill or not. 

Fiona Apple - Every Single Night (2012)

Fiona Apple is a singer-songwriter who first rose to fame in the 1990s as an alternative pop singer. However, over the years, she took longer breaks between albums and changed the style of her music to be much more artistic and esoteric, narrowing the scope of her audience. Around the time of the release of her album The Idler Wheel... where this song “Every Single Night” can be heard, Apple went public with her story about her battle with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. The song, the first track on the album, represents a completed shift away from the radio-friendly pop that Apple became famous for. The lyrics are filled with figurative and literal language blatantly connected to her struggle with mental illness, which certainly breaks the boundaries of today’s pop music. Throughout the song, Apple compares her struggle to the devil, “white-flamed butterflies”, “a second skeleton trying to fit beneath the skin”, and an unconventionally gruesome image of her breast busting open because of what’s happening to her heart. The repeated lyric “Every single night’s a fight with my brain” and the image of Apple fondling a human brain in the music video makes it clear that she is unwilling to remain subtle about her mental suffering. The colorful, surreal, fast-moving music video certainly contrasts with the slow, quiet instrumental of the song, and shows Apple engaging in activities that might comfort her while the world is appearing crazy around her. Apple’s direct, powerful vocals compliment her way of showing her fight with her brain, and this goes along with her constant eye contact with the camera in the video, as she is getting quite intimate and personal with the audience. 

Wesley Willis - My Keyboard Got Damaged (1995)

Wesley Willis, a singer-songwriter from Chicago, similar to Daniel Johnston, is often considered an outsider artist due to the amateur quality of his music and his schizophrenia’s effect on it. Willis’ music is often intentionally humorous, but perhaps the most bizarre aspect of his music is its structure. Most of his songs are backed by the auto-accompaniment feature on a cheap keyboard, and the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-product endorsement structure of his songs are extremely rigid between tunes. Many of Willis’s songs end up being very samey, and Willis is not a particularly gifted singer, but his strange lyrical subjects and highly unusual, highly emotional vocal delivery provide for more interesting content. “My Keyboard Got Damaged”, while sonically as humorous as the rest of Willis’ songs, is a more genuine lyrical depiction of an experience with schizophrenia. Willis’ story of being ejected off an airplane due to his adverse reaction after his “mean schizophrenia demon called me a jerk” is a relatable illustration of mental illness causing difficulties in everyday practicalities.

Jandek - Seattle Friday - Review

One of the most exciting aspects of the Jandek live projects is that he has collaborated with a lot of rather well-known performers including Richard Youngs, Loren Connors, Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest, and John McEntire of Tortoise. You can imagine my reaction when I found out that on Seattle Friday, Jandek played together with one of my beloved artists, Liz Harris, aka Grouper. I had never heard a live Jandek album yet, but I dove right into this because it looked awesome. 

I didn’t really know what live Jandek albums entailed by the first time I decided to listen to this, and I decently enjoyed it. However, I didn’t listen to it again until several months later, when I had finally listened to every Jandek album that had been released before it, so I understood all the steps that he’d taken to get to this point. With all his previous music in mind, this live performance turns out to be even more impressive than I first thought. It has more variety than most of his albums that I’ve heard. The musicianship is relatively more conventional and engaging, while still nailing the haunting, ominous, avant-garde quality of Jandek in general. 

The lineup is Jandek on electric guitar and vocals, Sam Coomes on bass, Emil Amos on drums, Grouper on vocals, and Jessica Dennison on backup vocals. Hey, same instrumental lineup as Portland Thursday! (I will post the already-finished review of that in a million years when I finish writing all the ones in-between this and that because I must post these in the order I listened to them.) I hear similarities between the two albums, but here they took it up a few notches and added those aspects of conventionality and grooviness. 

The songs fall under two categories. The first would be bluesy, noisy, experimental rock. The aspect of conventionality that I mentioned is because of these tracks, particularly the dominating bass. Chronologically, these are the first genuine blues riffs I have heard on a Jandek album in a while. The bass is so catchy and funky, and the guitar is chaotic and reverbed as usual. “Queen Anne Avenue” is probably the best example of the catchy bass riffs. Jandek also amps up his vocals on these tracks, and on “Cathy Sue”, “Live Right”, and “Yes Dear”, he sings together with the female vocalists. Lyrically, these all generally depict a relationship between the singers where the women are in charge. I find the interaction between the singers really amusing and it’s nice to hear Jandek having genuine fun. 

The other category of songs here are stripped-back, haunting ambient tracks with droning vocals from either Jandek or Grouper. Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but for the previous noisy rock Jandek live albums, I always kind of preferred the slower, quieter songs over the chaotic ones, so I’m pleased to see plenty of them present here. They certainly nail the atmosphere I’m looking for in these kinds of songs. Grouper sounds a lot different here than how I’m used to hearing her on her solo albums that I’ve heard. She sings a bit more like Jandek does, with slightly slurred deadpan droning, rather than her typical ethereal mezzo-soprano, but I still find the texture of her voice soothing. The final 2 tracks, “No One Around” (the first song that compelled me to listen to the rest of the album) and “Like You Love Me” are some of the strongest on the album. I love the vocal melodies, the haunting chimes, and the subtly shifting atmospheric bass. 

The rest of the lyrics that I haven’t mentioned are pretty standard Jandek stories/vignettes about nature scenes or relationships. Perhaps “No One Around” has my favorite lyrics with its vivid description of a deserted town. 

I recommend this album for Jandek fans, Grouper fans (to hear her doing something entirely different), and non-fans who are convinced that Jandek doesn’t have musical talent or originality. It’s a thoroughly exciting performance that ends up very high in my Jandek ranking after my second listen. 

8.5/10

Essential album?: Yes

Essential songs: 

Queen Anne Avenue

Yes Dear

No One Around*

Like You Love Me* 

Jandek - Nine-Thirty - Review

I mainly think of Nine-Thirty as the point where I realized Jandek’s genuine talent for guitar and the evolving maturity of his songwriting. It’s starting to feel less like amateur demos and more like an artist with a vision. The entire album is on acoustic guitar (a little bit of a surprise after some experimental rock albums), but there’s still a lot of variety compared to where he started out. There are clear instances of fretting and fairly complex strumming and picking, while still sounding bitter and somewhat repetitive. While there will inevitably be people who still argue that Jandek can’t play guitar, I say that on Nine-Thirty, he’s proven that he’s “mastered” his particular style of alternately-tuned playing to be more engaging. It also definitely sounds more planned out than random or improvised. 

Tracks such as “Tell Me When”, “Nine-Thirty”, and the instrumental “Tumblings” feature fast, intense strumming like Later On. The moments when the strings buzz add to the haunting mood of the songs and sound intentional. “Nine-Thirty” is a little catchy and has the most obvious instance of fretting on the album, and “Tumblings” has a subtle instrumental reference to “European Jewel”. (I highly recommend reading the extensive piece on Jandek by Nicole Marchesseau, which not only analyses the themes of each album, but interprets the recurring theme of the “European Jewel” riff throughout the Jandek discography.) 

Other songs feature more subtle, hypnotic picking like “Faye” and “This Is a Death Dream”. These work almost as well with the guitar being a sort of “percussion”. The best part of these is perhaps the way the vocals work together with the rhythm and tone of the guitar with a good amount of dissonance and a lonely, pained mood. 

The lyrics are mostly simple, and the most common theme is fear, with a few instances of a love theme. Jandek sounds genuinely afraid on a few of the songs, especially “Voices in the Dark”, a masterpiece on the album, where he ends with a morbid laugh as he tries to suppress his fear of the voices. The clear lyrical standout on the album is “This Is a Death Dream”, one of the most haunting and emotionally effective songs I’ve ever heard from Jandek. The singer describes his regular excursions to the cemetery where he searches for books, but only finds death books. His friends are too afraid and silly to help him at all. It ends with an invasion of “death monsters” into his house as his friends run away in terror, but Jandek stares on. It is certainly one of Jandek’s most poetically profound songs and represents the disappointment toward others that may not understand the human relationship with death as well as one does. The weeping guitar works well, along with Jandek’s increasingly concerned vocals throughout the song. 

There are a handful of throwaway short songs that don’t have any notable moments or lyrics, and the album overall doesn’t tell as much of a conceptual story as some of the previous albums did, having more scattered lyrical references, like lots of mentions of travelling and locations. The song structures are also generally repetitive as is the case with most Jandek albums. However, I still enjoyed the vast majority of this album, and I think it’s definitely one of the most solid and effective acoustic Jandek albums. 

7.5/10

Essential album?: Yes

Essential songs:

Faye

Voices in the Dark

This is a Death Dream*

Nine-Thirty

Jandek - Modern Dances - Review

Well, Modern Dances is one of the most confusing Jandek albums I’ve heard so far and that’s saying a lot considering how baffling the man’s entire existence is. I didn’t really know what to expect going into this one. The album cover is apparently from the same day as Blue Corpse, but really this sounds a lot more like Telegraph Melts, Part 2, which is confusing because the album sequence is Telegraph Melts - Follow Your Footsteps (a more normal album) - Modern Dances. 

This is similar to Telegraph Melts in that it’s an experimental noise rock album with 3 singers - Nancy, Jandek (not heard as much as the other 2), and the second scary guy who sounds like Jandek. There is a lot of brutal screaming, nonsense guitar work, and really disturbing lyrics (“Twelve Minutes Since February 32’nd”, the biggest WTF song ever). I like some of the disturbing lyrics, and I can pick out a few that were really memorable, especially when some of the songs reach their “narrative peak”, but some other songs also go absolutely nowhere and drag on for REALLY long like “I Painted My Teeth” (“Karl Marx painted his teeth!”), “I Want to Know Why”, and “Nothing Is Better Than God”. The latter of which is somehow my favorite and least favorite song on the album at the same time. The lyrics are a little bit funny and sarcastic at times, but Jandek’s repetition of “GOD GOD GOD GOD!!!” over 13 times is horrible. The ending is one of the shocking memorable moments that I love as Nancy despairingly yells, “I want to love you, God / I want to know God / I want to love you God / I want to be you / Is that wrong? Is that right? / I don’t think there’s anything, God”

Nancy’s parts are definitely the strongest point here. The guys are mostly screaming all their lines randomly and possibly improvising lyrics, but Nancy has some semblance of composition and melody, which are sometimes beautiful and sometimes fittingly ugly. Her vocal solo, “Spiritual Song”, is not bad at all. She also has a funny moment on “Number 512” where it sounds like she’s improvising lyrics, and in the middle of it she’s trying to “discreetly” tell the drummer to change it up. 

For the last 3 tracks, Jandek throws us one of the biggest curveballs so far and switches to solo acoustic guitar with Jandek on vocals. These tracks were extremely haunting and I felt like I’d stepped into a completely different dimension or nightmare from the rest of the album. I really like the lyrics on these last songs, which go back to a confessional singer/songwriter style. “Open E” is the first appearance of the lyrics from “I Know the Times” from You Walk Alone. 

This is certainly an interesting album in that it’s just jaw-dropping for the majority of its length because of the deathly screaming, spastic instrumentals, and absolute nonsense lyrics. “I Painted My Teeth” is about a man and woman going back and forth yelling at each other to not paint their teeth as a weird sort of sequel to “You Painted Your Teeth” from Telegraph Melts. “Twelve Minutes Since February 32’nd” is about how it’s “February 32nd” and it’s the perfect time of year to murder everyone in sight. What the hell? Modern Dances definitely has the unique raw ferality of Telegraph Melts that you can’t get from any artist other than Jandek, but it’s not nearly as concise or visionary as its predecessor. Also, the instrumentals are really lacking and there's zero "groove factor" or rhythm in any of the songs. The disturbing abrasiveness and complete lack of control and editing on the album makes it just a spectacle instead of a truly enjoyable listen. 

5/10

Essential album?: No

Essential songs:

Twelve Minutes Since February 32’nd 

Nothing Is Better Than God

Spiritual Song

Open E

Jandek - The Rocks Crumble - Review

The Rocks Crumble is my least favorite Jandek album so far, but sometimes I revisit it because it’s so dissonant and messy that it’s almost at the level of “so bad it’s good”. There is certainly a humorous element because of Jandek’s nonchalant, sarcastic vocals and the spastic, chaotic, atonal guitar and drums, but from a musical standpoint, it’s pretty awful most of the time. 

The first two tracks are on acoustic guitar, and they’re pretty haunting. “Faceless” is probably the best one here with strange lyrics about someone refusing to look into his eyes. “Birthday” has the same lyrics from “Nancy Sings” and “John Plays Drums”, with basically the same instrumental as the former, but with Jandek’s less-melodic vocals. The lo-fi compression and the dusty-basement atmosphere of the songs is typical for early Jandek, but it’s still high quality. 

This is followed by 3 versions in a row of the song “European Jewel”, which combines the two lyrical parts we heard from Ready for the House and Chair Beside a Window. Unfortunately, none of them improve upon the original versions, which were already perfect to me. They sound even more careless and out-of-tune, and the added drums don’t do much except make the song sound more amateur and feel less sincere. And we have to sit through this 3 times in a row.

The rest of the album is a repetitive mess of the same song structure over and over again: completely aimless noisy electric guitar strumming and seemingly randomly, non-synchronized overdubbed drums. This sound worked a lot better on albums like Telegraph Melts because each song had a different concept and multiple vocalists, but here it just sounds like a 20 minute jumbled mess. “Message to the Clerk” is at least interesting as a lyrical blueprint for the brilliant song from On the Way, but it’s still poorly executed like the rest. Out of these later tracks, I suppose “Same Road” works at least a little bit better because the repetition is somewhat catchy. Again, the unfettered aggression and fast tempo of the songs might be cathartic if you’re looking for music that sounds really chaotic, but that still doesn’t save it from generally being very poorly written and recorded. 

The lyrics are decent, with a few memorable lines here and there, but most of it is random and silly. The lyrics mostly have an aggressive tone to fit the mood of most of the music. The rhyme scheme is mostly couplets too, which adds to the silliness slightly, and some of the rhymes are the most expected words you could pick. Of course, the lyrics are not completely irredeemable because Jandek is a very talented lyricist in general, but he can do better. 

This album might have a few redeemable things, and it’s certainly really unique and interesting, and even satisfyingly chaotic and wrong at times, but I can still tell that Jandek didn’t really care at all when he made this album. It feels like a messy collection of demos rather than a concept like most of his other albums, especially because of the “3 of the same song in a row” thing. 

4/10

Essential album?: No

Essential songs: 

Faceless

Jandek - Follow Your Footsteps - Review

 

Follow Your Footsteps is definitely one of Jandek’s most accessible albums and it’s better than I expected. It should definitely be considered a Jandek “classic”. There are some pretty complex chords and fingerpicking on here, usually in standard tuning, but it still has a very primitive and amateur quality about it, especially with typical weird Jandek vocals and lyrics. My guess is the guitarist is the same skilled blues guitarist who would follow on Blue Corpse and You Walk Alone. There is a general weirdness and improvisational vibe with strange timing and chord choices on several tracks. It’s overall very folky and haunting. 

The beginning tracks have quite a few instrumentals, or songs where the vocals are mixed so low that you can’t discern the lyrics. They were alright, but they kept the album from being perfect. The opener, “Honey”, is a decent blues instrumental with loud atonal drums. My favorite part is definitely the ending where the whole tone of the song changes to something a lot more melancholic and reminds me of “Your Other Man”. The following “What Do You Want to Sing” is essentially the same kind of song with an acoustic guitar and a very brief vocal appearance from Nancy, who doesn’t appear on the album again, and then “Jaws of Murmur” is like the same song again but with very quiet vocals from the bluesy guy. The lyrics talk of some deathly bird, but are mostly incomprehensible. 

The following middle section has some pretty sweet folky tracks where the mood is almost comforting and warm, which is certainly a first for him. I like the soft, flowing strumming on “Didn’t Ask Why” and the fingerpicking on others. “Leave All You Have” is an interesting mix of subtle, haunting dissonance and “melodic” fingerpicking. “I Know You Well” is definitely the most memorable and probably the best song on the album because of the catchy descending fingerpicked guitar and the softness of Jandek’s whispered vocals. 

“Straight Thirty Seconds”, an instrumental atonal electric song, and the following songs completely switch up the tone of the album to be something more experimental. The guitarist switches back to Jandek and the songs are atonal and slightly disturbing. I actually enjoy these as much as the rest of the album, though. “For Today” and “Collection” recall the most intense moments on Chair Beside a Window and definitely show a lot of improvement in technique and songwriting. 

The lyrics are not the strong point of this album. There is a lot of nonsense and possibly improvised lines. There might be some slightly meaningful lyrics here and there, but it definitely doesn’t show Jandek’s lyrical talent at its best. However, this album was still a huge step forward for Jandek because it’s the first one to feature the “good” guitarist and reworks the “full band” setup from Telegraph Melts to create something a little sweeter and folkier that focuses more on the lead man. It’s not as much of a profound statement as other Jandek albums might be and it’s more of a musical experiment rather than a concept, but it’s definitely an important step toward the upcoming accessible folk album Blue Corpse, which had more of a fleshed-out concept. 

7/10

Essential album?: Yes

Essential songs:

Honey

Leave All You Have

I Know You Well*

Collection

Jandek - Later On - Review

Later On, Jandek’s third album, includes some musical “improvements” relative to Ready for the House and Six and Six, but also doesn’t have a lot of what made those albums special. The recording quality is slightly improved. The guitar is more aggressive and clearer, perhaps because he is now using a pick instead of his fingers. Intense strumming moments, like the intro to “Wild Strawberries” from Six and Six, make up over half of the album here, which makes for slightly more engaging music. 

Jandek’s vocals have also changed a lot and are more engaging like the guitar. He gets really aggressive on tracks like “Your Condition” and “The Janitor”, but also brings back the wispy, broken vocals from the first 2 albums on “Don’t Know if I Care”. A few tracks feature an overdubbed harmonica, which is also played harshly and non-melodically like the guitar. It’s an interesting addition that helps the album break out of sameness and I like that it’s mixed very quietly and mysteriously on a few of the songs. 

However, Later On just doesn’t have the same disturbing, bleak ambience that the first two albums had. The soft guitar and the somewhat calming sparseness of the picking from the first two albums is only present for about half the time here, while the rest is really "angry". It’s also missing the level of lyrical brilliance that the first two albums had. There are just a few interesting stories and pictures of emotions conveyed throughout. 

“What Did I Hear” tells a story of betrayal and deception, and questions the concept of time. “So Fly, Max” is about the relatable feeling of not knowing what to do because of emotional emptiness. “The Janitor” is an angry message to a character about how he spends all day cleaning but doesn’t actually take care of himself. “Don’t Know if I Care” is about confusion at the world and not even knowing how you feel because everyone is going a different way. However, I think those 4 songs are the extent of my interest in the lyrics. The rest of the lyrics focus on simple statements or descriptions that don’t really have any significance to me, and a lot of them are really repetitive like “Your Condition” and “Just Whisper”. I can’t help but be disappointed at this in comparison to the highly sophisticated poetry/imagery/metaphors from the first two albums. 

I think Later On is just an album that sets the stage for Chair Beside a Window and the following albums. It brings in a lot of new techniques and styles for Jandek that we will hear over and over for decades to come. It was a necessary stepping stone for Jandek’s musical style, but it’s not a very interesting or profound piece of art on its own in his discography, even though it’s still enjoyable and not genuinely bad in any way. 

6/10

Essential album?: Maybe, it’s not super interesting but it at least bridges the differences between Six and Six and Chair Beside a Window. 

Essential songs:

Your Condition

The Janitor

Don’t Know if I Care

The Second End

Jandek - Telegraph Melts - Review

The next step on my Jandek journey was something completely different. I’d heard him do avant-folk, “accessible” folk, blues rock, and a few other things, but I was not prepared for the absolute cacophony and disturbing confusion that is Telegraph Melts. 

Jandek’s “noise rock band” era preceded his blues rock era and was similarly short-lived, but produced some of his most interesting and varied content. I don’t think the whole experimental band era of Jandek gets as much appreciation as it should, because I consider this album one of the “Jandek masterpieces” because of the effect it’s had on me and the amount of variety. Out of the four albums that roughly fall under this category (Interstellar Discussion, Foreign Keys, Telegraph Melts, and Modern Dances), Telegraph Melts definitely far exceeds the others. These albums primarily feature a full band performing extremely dissonant, noisy, slightly blues-inspired outsider “garage rock”. The vocalists include the same Jandek from the previous albums, a second male vocalist who sounds very similar to Jandek (easily mistaken for him) but has a different accent and a deeper tone, and a female vocalist named Nancy who we previously heard on “Nancy Sings” from Chair Beside a Window.

There were a lot of words I used to describe this album after I finished my first listen - weird, raw, dirty, intense, provocative, confusing, which all fit fine - but perhaps the most apt is “feral”. I love that the band members sound like they have no formal musical training whatsoever, but have a very precise and clear vision of what kind of art they want to make, and accomplish it perfectly because they don’t have the skills to make “perfect” music. It all comes out incredibly raw and rudimentary, and while it may sound similar to 80s No Wave bands like Sonic Youth and DNA, this has more of an untrained youthfulness to it that somehow makes it more disturbing. The singers make improvised, primal shouts, the untuned, dirty-sounding instruments stumble along, and several songs have abrupt endings. 

On the short opener “You”, the drums march quickly while the guitar jerks awkwardly and Nancy starts to sing much more wildly than she did on the primitive, hymn-like “Nancy Sings”. This sets the stage for the following “On the Planes”, a similar song, where Nancy belts an awkward yet strangely beautiful melody that somehow works over the dissonant instrumental. While she is a skilled singer, something about her voice is so familiar that she still sounds like a random girl from the deep south that got put in the band by chance. The fact that no one knows her identity makes her feel more ghostly. “Go To Bed” is more intense and disturbing, with the tempo of the song increasing and Nancy’s vocals becoming more raw as she holds long, echoing notes, and screams the title of the song by the end. 

“Ace of Diamonds” brings in a vocal performance from Jandek that is more intense than normal and very memorable. It is not far off from “Go To Bed” where the drums increase the tempo throughout the song and the vocals become louder and more fervent as Jandek screams at the top of his lungs at his poker opponent about how he’ll destroy them. The lo-fi compression and the feedback sounds make it more chaotic. “Twenty-Four” is another similar song with Jandek vocals. It rises and falls in intensity throughout. The lyrics are very dark and pessimistic and speak of the inevitability of death.

“No Slow Ones” and “Telegraph Melts” are like awkward, ill attempts at ballads that end up becoming something different and very experimental in the process. Nancy does her improvised, country-like, somewhat catchy melodies over slower, subtler instrumentals. On the title track, she sings one of Jandek’s poems that later got used on You Walk Alone, whose lyrics I have already interpreted on my review of that album. However, it’s still a unique take on the song because it’s being sung from the woman’s perspective, which includes a pronoun change. Jandek comes in toward the end of the song to sing a sort of bridge, which makes it feel like a conversation, and hints that the song may be about the relationship between the two singers. A harmonica gives the song a slight tinge of blues. 

“Governor Rhodes” departs from the formula of the previous song and introduces the alternate male vocalist who sings/chants together with Nancy. The title may refer to Ohio governor James A. Rhodes. They chant repetitively about celebrating nature and singing together and mention random names over a primal drum beat, creating something creepily cult-like. This song marks somewhat of a midpoint in the album where the content becomes a lot more intense and disturbing after this. 

“Star Up in the Sky” shows the alternate male vocalist’s ability to freak us out. His creepy voice is rebellious and youthful, and the loud mixing gives it a smothering effect. He wavers between deep droning notes and high, disturbed screams with a slight humorous tone. He sings together with Nancy, but his voice is very much overpowering in the song. A harmonica hums like a deconstructed blues song throughout. 

“You Painted Your Teeth” is the main highlight from this album and is still probably the most disturbing Jandek song, or maybe even the most disturbing thing I’ve heard from anyone. The guitar and drums randomly jerk around quietly, and then the male singer’s voice comes in and it’s piercing and loud. It launches right into intense screaming with no intro or anything, and somehow it grabs my attention and captivates me for the whole time every time I listen to it. A YouTube comment describing this as “Swans with extra chromosomes” actually describes it perfectly. The disturbing lyrics sound like they came from an alternate universe because they make no sense. The singer frenziedly yells at a woman, telling her not to paint her teeth, or else he will literally murder her. At the midpoint of the song he admits “I painted my teeth”, which just makes me think about what’s the deeper meaning behind not wanting someone to paint their teeth, but doing it to yourself anyway. 

“You’re going to go to heaven,

Everything’s going to be WHITE!

WHITE, WHITE WHITE WHITE WHITE WHITE, BABY!!!

BUT NOT YOUR TEETH!”

Nancy randomly yelps “No…” with fear at the end of the song, which aptly describes my reaction to this song. My jaw was literally on the floor. It was hard to believe that this was the work of a “band” that had to be playing together to make this music instead of this just being something from the disturbed mind of one person. That goes for this whole album, really. 

“Mothers Day Card” follows the terrifying song with something a little more lighthearted. Two male singers, or perhaps the same guy overdubbing himself, read off the lines from what sounds like a Mother’s Day card from the dollar store with a sinister and humorous tone. “The Fly” has Jandek and the other male vocalist singing together. Jandek takes the lead while the other guy mostly moans and screams morbidly in the background. The lyrics sound like nonsense but bring up themes of death again. The closer “House Up on the Hill” is a proper duet between Nancy and the second male vocalist and describes a creepy abandoned house where they go to drink. The man does more of his scary screaming, but Nancy’s repetition of “To the water” is actually pretty catchy. It’s definitely one of my favorites on this album. 

Overall, I love all the unique little flaws of this album and the confusion and disturbance that it exudes. It’s definitely one of the heaviest and most experimental albums from Jandek. I also like the amount of “theatricality” it has in comparison to other Jandek albums because of a unique picture painted with each track. The tone of the lyrics is very sinister and confused to fit the qualities of the music. The themes are less personal than previous albums to illustrate a kind of collective suffering among the performers. They sing very strange and nonsensical things, but the lyrics plus the chaotic music somehow convey the deepest, most hidden human desires for darkness, violence, and death. 

8.5/10

Essential album?: Yes

Essential tracks:

Ace of Diamonds

Go To Bed

Telegraph Melts

Governor Rhodes

You Painted Your Teeth*

House Up on the Hill

My Rating System Explained

I just realized I never took a moment to explain what the numbers I assign to music on this blog mean. I've always thought about this, but just never wrote it down, so here I will explain what each rating out of 10 means to me.

10: Perfect, very important to me, I listen to it all the time.

9: Mostly perfect songs, also important to me.

8: Mostly great songs, very impressive.

7: Mostly good songs, very enjoyable throughout.

6: Mostly good songs, but no strong feelings about it.

5: Some good parts, but not really my thing.

4: Some decent parts, but overall disappointing.

3: Mostly bad songs, very little holding it up.

2: Mostly awful songs, nearly irredeemable.

1 or 0: Completely awful, stirs up negative feelings.

This is something I think about and change all the time. For example, I think about if I can consider an album a 10 on my first listen even if I think it's perfect, because I also want to reserve my 10s for the albums that are the most personally important to me. 

I think what I have settled on here is pretty good because I can better classify the music that I like; I rarely ever dislike any music, and on most albums, I enjoy every song to some extent. Because I practically enjoy everything, I can put albums I enjoy into more specific tiers relative to each other by making a score of 7 mean "very enjoyable". This is easier than having a score of 7 meaning "average" like some other reviewers do, because otherwise practically everything would have very high scores and I wouldn't know what's better than what. 

Jandek - You Walk Alone - Review

You Walk Alone is my favorite Jandek album, and I don’t know if any of the rest will manage to top this one as I continue my Jandek listening journey because I think You Walk Alone is simply perfect from beginning to end. This album represents the artistic peak of Jandek’s short-lived blues rock era. I read one reviewer write that saying one of the Jandek blues albums was his best was like saying your favorite Picasso piece was one of the paintings from before he discovered cubism. I suppose that’s somewhat true; the album is relatively “accessible” and doesn’t resemble the vast majority of the minimalist, depressive folk music that people might say represents the “spirit” of Jandek. However, that doesn’t mean this album isn’t still uniquely experimental, mysterious, lo-fi, and made by a total outsider with an untouchable innocence. The experimentation is one thing, but I also think the songwriting, musical performance, and lyrics cover a wide range of emotions, and are some of the most convicting and powerful pieces I have ever heard. It goes without saying that other Jandek albums just don’t quite hit like this one. 

The album features “professional” electric blues guitar with at least two guitarists who are ostensibly more classically trained than Jandek. The guitar sound is loud, lo-fi, and raw. The songs are melodic, complex, and improvisational, like a conversation between the performers. The drums are the most unusual instrument on the album, and resemble earlier Jandek albums. They have a heavy, primitive, untuned sound, and keep rhythm, but in a strange childlike manner. In general, even if the musicianship on this album might feel sloppy, I think that adds to its unique atmosphere and character. On the instrumental opener “Lavender”, the drums are more like someone running fast than an actual drum beat, but something about their enveloping sound is satisfying and fits the lo-fi aesthetic of the album.

Jandek’s vocals are as good of an instrument on the album as the guitars, as this album features his best vocal work as well. He ranges from gentle whispers, to primal blues-style howling, to emotionally charged belting. He plays with the guitarists with his vocals in the same way they improvise with each other. He reaches the peaks of his intensity and volume when the guitars are at their rawest and most psychedelic. 

The second track “Time and Space” is the best of the best, and we’ll have to see if this remains my favorite Jandek song by the end of the listening challenge. The song centers on a basic catchy blues riff with a different variation of a solo at the end of each repetition. Jandek gets silly as he sings his bizarre, existential lyrics about carrying clothes in coffins and putting oranges from Florida in the closet. The drums are similar to those from “Lavender” and complement the rhythmic guitar better here. Each singing-right-in-your-ear repetition of “Ohh, time, ohhh, space” gets more intense as the guitar builds in the same way. The song is so abstractly constructed, but at the same time one of the most brilliantly structured Jandek songs. 

The following “The Cat That Walked From Shelbyville” (same lyrics as the avant-garde “For Today” from Follow Your Footsteps) takes things down a notch and presents a gentle, pleasant, folksy ballad. There are no drums and Jandek’s vocals remain soft, giving the song a sparse, restrained feel. There are once again several guitar solos throughout the song. The lyrics are as bizarre and random as the previous song and add to the abstractness of the music. However, something about the delivery makes them feel romantic regardless of what he’s actually saying. 

“Quinn Boys II” reworks the song from Blue Corpse to be a lot more interesting. The drums are more of the same weirdly satisfying primal pounding. Jandek’s vocals are a bit obnoxious in a way that I like. The song ends up being one of the weaker ones on the album, but there is one part I love when the drums slow down and then stop completely, and then one guitarist plays a beautiful, gentle riff. The other guitarist picks up on what he is doing and starts harmonizing with the melody. Jandek’s vocals get softer and sweeter and the song concludes in a satisfying way. 

On “The Way That You Act” (mostly the same lyrics as “Customary” from Interstellar Discussion), one guitar keeps a consistent catchy riff while the other acts like a duet singer with Jandek’s vocals with a solo that lasts through the whole song. I have to stress how catchy the guitar melodies are on this album because you just don’t get it very often from Jandek. He builds up into howling, echoing screams by the peak of the song. The song is so rebellious and primal. The lyrics are made up of more bizarre lines, in couplets this time, but the powerful screaming delivery somehow makes every single line feel important and memorable no matter how nonsensical they may be. “IT BURNS AND I SMOKE IT!! EATS WORMS AND I CHOKE IT!!!”

“I Know the Times” (same lyrics as “Open E” from Modern Dances) is the album’s weakest track, but it’s still fantastic by Jandek standards. The song is the only one here to feature the alternate male vocalist, the same one who sang the first few songs on Blue Corpse. His vocals are not as fervent or avant-garde as Jandek’s, but introduce a different flavor of old school blues type singing that’s still beautiful and haunting in its own way. The guitars and drums take it slow and simple here with a small build up at the end. The lyrics speak of the simple message of treasuring the finite moments we have to spend with one another in a profound, poetic way. 

The 9 minute “When the Telephone Melts” (another lyric reworking, of the title track from Telegraph Melts) is another Jandek masterpiece. The song takes the toned-down, melancholic route as a contrast to the grit of the preceding songs. The song manages to stay engaging for its length. The rhythm guitar is slightly out of tune and the primitive drums gently pound throughout the song, setting up the devastatingly bittersweet tone of the song. The lead guitar is constantly changing and finding new ways to reinforce the powerful emotion of the song, and once again works like a duet with Jandek’s vocals. The vocals are non-traditional and don’t follow any typical melodic progressions, but this song is still the best example I can give of Jandek’s genuine vocal talent. The vocals are Bob Dylan-esque because they sound careless, but are actually deliberate and quite impassioned. Jandek doesn’t harmonize with the instruments, but he sings off key in a specific way that perfectly conveys the pain and passion in his voice. 

The lyrics of “When the Telephone Melts” are the best on the album. My interpretation is that they are about a man who left a woman, and he feels conflicted about her because she would always hurt his feelings and joke about him. She may come back to him after a long time of separation, but he doesn’t know if he’ll let her stay because of how she treated him. He reminisces about how he would laugh along with her, but once he tried to get in on the joking himself, he realized they had different points of view and that it is hard to find the real her. The ending is a powerful, ambiguous line: “Well you can joke about me baby / Yeah you can say my name in vain, say my name in vain…”

The closer “War Dance” has grown on me a lot. Jandek ends the album with another punchy, rebellious cut. His vocals are mixed louder and his mouth is right on the mic, distorting his voice and giving it a humorous tone. He sings chantingly about a tribal dance, war, and animistic power. The closing lines are a memorable ending to the album. 

“Sun give us the strength to live

Wind bring our path back home

Oh moon, give us stealth

Oh moon, flow like their blood

Oh rain, flow like their blood

At the pierce of our spear

At the pierce of our spear”

You Walk Alone was one of the first blues rock albums I had listened to, and ends up being the Jandek album I revisit the most. I listened to most of the songs where the lyrics originated after I had already heard this one multiple times; I find it fascinating how Jandek reworked some of his best and more bizarre older lyrics to work within much more melodic and complex song structures, particularly the transformations of “Customary” to “The Way That You Act” and “Telegraph Melts” to “When the Telephone Melts” (both original songs are still great in their own way). Also, the amount of meaning I found in the smallest details of the guitar work on each subsequent listen certainly intrigued me to start listening to more of the blues genre. I love how this feels like the biggest, most well-executed concept Jandek ever created. 

10/10

Essential album?: Yes

Essential songs:

Time and Space*

The Cat That Walked From Shelbyville*

The Way That You Act*

Quinn Boys II

When the Telephone Melts*

War Dance