Jandek - On the Way - Review

On the Way is one of Jandek’s most varied albums and, while still being avant-garde as usual, ends up being one of the more “listenable” albums of his discography, and has some legendary songs. I was not as much of a fan of the album on my first listen as I am now; I felt like the variety of genres found on the album made it unfocused. Much of the album is inspired by blues rock, which I was also not a fan of at the time. However, after acquiring a taste for Jandek’s raw, accessible blues songs, and realizing variety is of the essence when it comes to Jandek albums, On the Way turns out to be one of my most favorite and most played Jandek albums.

The album starts with one of the most dissonant experimental rock songs I have ever heard, “Wrap It Up”. The instrumentation is similar to “European Jewel” from Chair Beside a Window, with somewhat of a “rhythm” guitar and a “lead” guitar, but it’s about as sensible as The Shaggs when it comes to classifying those parts. The drums march consistently, but don’t seem to follow the guitar at all. Jandek’s vocals are mixed louder than the rest of the instruments. He sounds downright exhausted and almost comedic as he yells shockingly dark lyrics like “IIIIII just wanna die… UGHHH, I’m living again”. The absolute chaos and the overdone performance makes this one of the most memorable Jandek songs in general. “Bring It Back to Seventy-Five” follows essentially the exact same song formula as “Wrap It Up” with similarly hopeless lyrics. My favorite part is “WhooOOOoops, I spilled the beans” which actually makes me laugh.

Then there’s “Message to the Clerk”, the first straight-up blues rock song from Jandek I heard. The guitar rhythm and the harmonica accompaniment is super catchy and very raw and lo-fi. The best part of the song is Jandek’s vocal performance, which really illustrates him as a genuinely talented vocalist. It is mostly screamed and sounds muffled, as if the mic is right by his mouth, which fits the noisy nature of this album. The performance fits the instrumental perfectly. The lyrics tell a confusing story that’s generally about the singer being a rebel with a gun. The song is 7 minutes long, but still manages to be addictive and very replayable.

“Give It the Name” is an even more accessible and catchy blues rock song. The bass, guitar, and drums rumble together in a slow, infectious rhythm. The vocals are still the most interesting aspect of the song, but they are performed by what sounds like the alternate vocalist from Blue Corpse instead of Jandek. His voice is rough, like Captain Beefheart, and is perfect for blues. The lo-fi compression of the instruments complements the rawness of the song. “Ambient Instrument” is a cute blues instrumental, but I was never really that interested in it. “Sadie” is in the same vein as “Give It the Name” with the same vocalist and a similar instrumental style. It’s not as catchy, but it’s enjoyable nonetheless. The lyrics describe the singer’s adventures with a girl named Sadie as they go out partying and drinking every night, but eventually their relationship has a fall out.

The final 3 tracks of the album are gentle blues-inspired folk songs. “I’ll Sit Alone and Think a Lot About You” is a sweet, romantic song with beautiful vocals from the alternate vocalist. The song is based on a repeated finger-picked chord progression that sometimes changes to strumming. The drumming is peculiar and non-traditional like the previous tracks, but actually turns out sounding really gentle and hypnotic, and really adds to the haunting, calming atmosphere of the song. The song is very long, and I’m not the biggest fan of it myself, but I do appreciate that it’s one of the most pleasant-sounding and soothing things Jandek has ever put out. “The Only Way You Can Go” brings back Jandek’s vocals and pairs a whispery performance with a very gentle acoustic blues instrumental. The vocals get a little uncomfortable at times, the lyrics don’t make much sense, and it feels a little aimless, but it’s still a nice soothing song.

The final song, “I’m Ready”, is undoubtedly the best song on this record, and is the first song I show to people when I introduce them to Jandek. The chord progression is beautiful, and the strumming pattern is soft and flowing. Jandek’s vocals whisper one of his most profound lyrics: “If you wanna know why you’re a woman / It’s cause you don’t wanna be a man / You just wanna have one”. The lyrics describe a man who knows he’s infatuated with his object of love, but knows that there’s no future for them because there’s another man involved. The performance of the song is powerfully reserved and patient.

The variety of styles within On the Way is ultimately a great asset for the album and means that I can return to its songs when feeling different things. The last few songs are very calming, but I can also go to the first few songs if I just feel like frying my brain with the dissonance. It also shows Jandek’s strength and versatility in musicianship and songwriting. It rightfully deserves to be called one of his best albums.

8/10

Essential album?: Yes

Essential songs:
Wrap It Up*
Message to the Clerk*
I’ll Sit Alone and Think a Lot About You
I’m Ready*

Jandek - Chair Beside a Window - Review

“We can’t deny
There’s spirits in this house
You shut the door
The wind closes two more
I laugh a dark laugh
You smile and think about it”

These are the opening lines to “Down in a Mirror” by Jandek, one of the most haunting and poignant things ever recorded by anyone. Jandek picks the guitar strings slowly and rhythmically, lacking any musical standardization or even a key, but manifesting the most primal human emotion as he whispers about his dead lover haunting the house and begs for her to come back. A background sound that could be a rocking chair or Jandek tapping his foot follows the hypnotic rhythm. The digital warping from the deterioration of the recording becomes its own instrument that adds to the song’s mournful solemnity. It feels like I am hearing something so personal that is not supposed to be heard.

On the second track “European Jewel” on Jandek’s fourth album, Chair Beside a Window, the song starts in the middle of a harsh electric guitar strum backed by an awkward, buzzing bass and rising and falling drums that sound like a bunch of boulders falling instead of something meant to keep rhythm. Jandek starts singing with the same lyric that was cut off randomly at the end of the version of “European Jewel” that ended Ready for the House. His vocal delivery is off-kilter and more anxious than the incomplete version, but much louder than what we heard on the previous track from this album. In fact, it hardly sounds like the same artist at all. The song unexpectedly builds and builds and has some of the most brutal drum pounding and guitar shredding I’ve ever heard. Jandek immediately proves that he “ain’t gonna fool no more” and that this is going to be a much more varied and emotionally intense album than what we’ve heard so far, and it’s an artistic breakthrough for him.

The next 3 tracks continue to defy expectations with very intense, gradually building guitar strums and a quite theatrical vocal performance about “a poor boy who lost his mama”. Jandek’s guitar technique, which might have seemed like the most unimportant aspect of his music on the first few albums, is becoming a whole lot more eclectic and interesting. The abrasive harmonica on "You Think You Know How to Score" conveys unfettered aggression at the far end of the emotional spectrum that this album covers.

Suddenly, another character enters the empty void of the unknown Jandek world. A beautiful, comparatively melodic, birdlike female voice comes out of nowhere on “Nancy Sings”. She sings a beautiful lyric about connecting oneself with nature. Jandek accompanies her singing with a minimalist, keyless, yet somehow perfectly fitting guitar rhythm, one string at a time. She sounds like a more trained vocalist than Jandek, but similar to him in the way that they are incomparable to any time period or any aspect of culture, making it feel like time doesn’t exist when you listen to them.

“No Break” introduces another female vocalist, identified by Jandek in an interview as “Nancy’s sister Pat”, who has an airier, frankly incomprehensible voice. My friend has described the track as “the most surreal song I’ve listened to”, which actually makes perfect sense if you just listen to it. The electric guitar strums non-melodically, similarly to “European Jewel”, but the strangest part about it is the vocals. Pat awkwardly yells “Get it loud!” and then starts mumbling incoherently with her mouth right on the mic and breathes very heavily. Drums play gently and rhythmically in the background. The guitar rhythm picks up and Pat’s vocals escalate as she belts “You’re a jerk, go to work! You’re nuts! You’re nuts!” Everything about the song feels amateur and awkward. It sounds like a band who doesn’t know what they’re doing trying to sound check. But I’m not trying to criticize it for any of that. All of its “flaws” make the experience of this album more and more surreal. It feels like untouchable innocence and weirdness captured on tape, like The Shaggs if they were trying to make disturbing yet poignant art.

The rest of the album mostly continues the intense acoustic guitar strumming and singing, and is less interesting, but still quality listening. The lyrics are simpler than Jandek’s previous albums and mostly focus on just one idea per song, which fall under loneliness, love, and spite. “Love, Love” speaks of the power of the way of love, but Jandek’s anxious delivery and the peculiar line “Decide for yourself just what is God” clue us in that the singer is hiding darker feelings beneath the lyrics.

Chair Beside a Window represents a lot of artistic firsts for Jandek, and conveys a whole array of emotions not found on many of his other records. It is overall one of his most ambitious and interesting concepts, and is generally more listenable compared to the rest of his albums from this early experimental period. However, while it may be listenable and show skillful improvement, it still has that feeling that most Jandek albums have, that a ghost is haunting this record, and it conveys it the most prominently out of a lot of what he’s done. It’s also still incomparable to anything anyone else was creating at any time period, and captures a unique childlike innocence combined with rather mature songwriting and lyrics. It is one of my most favorite Jandek albums that I revisit all the time, and many fans believe it’s his best of all.

9/10

Essential album?: Yes

Essential songs:
Down in a Mirror*
European Jewel*
Unconditional Authority
Nancy Sings*
No Break
Love, Love

Jandek - Blue Corpse - Review

Blue Corpse is perhaps Jandek’s most accessible folk album, but it’s still quite avant-garde and a lot darker than anything you would get from any other artist. I wasn’t too impressed with Jandek’s first two albums on my first listen, but by checking out Blue Corpse next, I was completely sold on Jandek. I appreciate that Jandek brought in other artists to collaborate with him on this album, such as the alternate male vocalist, and the more conventional guitarist (who may be the same as the vocalist) who fans call “Eddie” because of the “take it, Eddie” line on “Down at the Ball Park”. The variety in instrumentation and singing really freshens up the album formula, but of course still feels very outsider and haunting. 

The first 3 songs on the album are the most conventional folk songs Jandek has released in general, but their melancholy is still sublime. The alternate singer’s voice is simply breathtaking. His vocal technique is somewhat similar to Jandek, but sounds much smoother and mature. “Variant” includes a gentler delivery, and is one of the best songs on the album. The songwriting style feels very inspired by Bob Dylan, but sparser and more lo-fi. The guitar is in standard tuning and the playing sounds very crisp and fluid. 

“Part II” is where the avant-garde elements start to get introduced, mainly because the vocalist switches to Jandek, and his delivery is much more anxious and even manic. This transitions into a similar song that is presumably the “Part I”, which is “Your Other Man”. A fan favorite, this track certainly ranks in at least the top 5 Jandek songs of all time. The song starts out as quiet and dismissive, but escalates into what sounds like a recorded emotional breakdown as Jandek moans and screams at the loss of his lover and the guitar becomes more intense. The performance and lyrics are so painfully honest and make the best use of Jandek’s classic folk inspiration combined with his avant-garde, melancholic tendencies. 

Starting with “Long Way”, a short funny song that I like, the album becomes less serious and starts to decline in quality, but still has a few highlights. “Down at the Ball Park” is a silly blues song that’s very interesting and strange, but feels like filler. “Harmonica” is a meandering instrumental that also feels like filler. “House of the Rising Sun” is a rare instance of a cover on a Jandek album, and I think it’s just alright, although the presence of decent guitar technique is always welcome. 

“Only Lover” is a 10 minute song that goes back to the serious tone of the earlier songs and feels like another emotional breakdown. The guitar technique builds gradually, until the rhythm sounds remarkably similar to “Your Other Man” by the end. I think the song makes very good use of its run time and ends up being pretty engaging by Jandek’s standards, and is one of the best on this great album. However, I feel like the last 2 tracks are unremarkable. Despite some sub-par songs, that doesn’t stop this from being a truly exceptional Jandek album, and one of the best out of all of his works. 

Finally, I want to highlight the lyrics on this album, which are not far off from the high quality poetry on his first 2 albums. The record builds a concept/story about a woman leaving a relationship with the singer. Even though the first few songs are sung by the alternate singer, the subject matter seems to be about one man. Jandek’s lyrics are always personal and peculiar in the same narrative voice, which helps his music retain its identity as his project, even though he has collaborators. 

The lyrics of Blue Corpse are about longing for the lost lover to some extent, but are far more focused on the grieving, depression, and denial following the breakup. A few songs such as “I Passed by the Building” and “Only Lover” feature extremely dark themes like suicidal thoughts and self hatred, and show the dark places that love can take us to. The second half of the album strays from this concept, but the lighthearted, silly songs are in my opinion some form of healing for the singer, as they feature Jandek laughing along with others that are heard in the background. 

I think Blue Corpse is not only essential for people looking to get into Jandek, but essential for everyone. It’s relatively accessible, but still incredibly dark and profound in a way that not a lot of other artists will give you. While revisiting this album and revising this review after having heard almost half of Jandek’s discography, I still think Blue Corpse near-perfectly exemplifies the appeal of Jandek’s artistry, and is my second favorite album by him besides the album that came after this, You Walk Alone. 

9/10

Essential Album?: Yes

Essential songs:

I Passed by the Building*

C F

Variant*

Part II

Your Other Man*

Only Lover*

Jandek - Six and Six - Review

Six and Six is a very similar album to Ready for the House. There’s slightly more variety in guitar style, i.e. the rapid picking at the beginning of “Wild Strawberries”, but it’s not that much different. Ready for the House is overall more memorable; this album features less exciting vocals, and lacks any melodic songs on electric guitar. However, Six and Six is still pretty good in its own way. The vocals and instrumentation are hypnotic, but mostly unchanging throughout the album, so the main aspect to discuss here is the lyrics.

The lyrics have different themes than those of Jandek’s first album. Loneliness is still a theme here, but less so. The album instead amplifies romantic themes, complexity, and features different types of imagery, such as nature. The lyrics read more like straight-up poetry rather than stream-of-consciousness. They feature more metaphors and seem to tell a story about the singer. Take “I Knew You Would Leave”, for example, the 10-minute lyrical centerpiece of the album. The song is based on a metaphor of the cycle of rocks crumbling representing the cycle of being left by those we love, transitioning into a sorrowful cry towards a “beast of time” and to God, and ending with the two characters finally meeting again on a “journey to the stars”.

Jandek’s deadpan singing persists throughout the whole album, and it can be either effective or ruin the theme of a song. “You’re the Best One” might have been a beautiful love song describing someone who is “one in a million” if not for Jandek’s vocal delivery, which makes it sound more like he hates the person he’s describing. Meanwhile, this delivery is more effective on the depressive closer “Delinquent Words”, my favorite song on the album, which questions the feeling of meaninglessness that comes from the endless cycle of human death.

7/10

Essential album?: Yes

Essential songs:
I Knew You Would Leave
Wild Strawberries
You’re the Best One
Delinquent Words*

Jandek - Ready for the House - Review and Introduction to Jandek Series

In a period of a few months, the outsider artist Jandek has become one of my favorite artists ever. Something about his music is so lonely, unique, poetic, conceptual, and most of all, avant-garde. I felt like there was some bigger concept that each album added to every time I checked out a new Jandek album. Because of these connections between albums, I decided to start writing reviews of every Jandek album I listened to in order to gather my thoughts and rate/rank his albums according to my opinions.

I'm planning to listen to all of his albums by some point; he has 99 albums of original material at the time of writing. Several of his albums are live recordings, but surprisingly, all Jandek concerts consist of entirely new music and lyrics. Most of the reviews I've written are in a very casual, rough format, but I'm going to start a series on this blog where I'll clean up the reviews and finally post them for all to see. Instead of posting these reviews in the order of the album release dates, I'm going to post them in the order that I listened to them. I didn't listen to Jandek's discography in order, so there were certain things I put or didn't put in these reviews that makes them most sensible to put in this order. Sorry if this is confusing, but starting with Twelfth Apostle, I decided that I was going to challenge myself to listen to every single album, so at that point, the reviews will be in order.

Additionally, these reviews will serve as somewhat of a "guide to Jandek". I will not only talk about my opinions on the music, but also the content of the albums themselves as if the reader has not heard it, and my speculation on how they were made. For each album, I will indicate whether or not I think it is an essential album within his discography, and list the essential songs from that album. Songs with an asterisk are my absolute favorites.

Note that I have reviewed every album I've listened to already, but the reviews are in a very rough draft form. If you want to read my rough drafts, check them out here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QqVthWnb9BYrdcK4PVyDSJSMQaj9j8EPlkPImHgixhw/edit?usp=sharing 

Here is my review of Jandek's first album, Ready for the House (1978).

Ready for the House is where Jandek's story started. The entire album, except for the final track, is played on solo acoustic guitar plus vocals. You may recall something such as Pink Moon, but this is even more raw and primitive. The album cover is one of the most unique and haunting photos I’ve ever seen. The colors look very unnatural, and the lighting looks as if it was from a camera flashing in the pitch darkness. The empty chair beside a window with the shade pulled down, along with the other peculiar elements of the cover, hint that this is one of the most depressive folk albums ever created. Jandek’s guitar is tuned to a unique alternate tuning, and the album is played entirely on open strings, so every song is a variation of one chord. Jandek lore indicates that early albums sounded like this because of an old guitar where the strings were too far from the frets to play properly. The chord itself feels frankly bitter and dusty, unlike anything I've ever heard before, and the artist reportedly tuned his guitar until it sounded right to him.

The album is one of the most unique and memorable I’ve ever heard. The first listen is the most grueling to get through because of the repetitive guitar style, but it gets better on repeated listens because you get used to the Jandek style, and you begin to notice the melodies. The vocals are very anxious and whispery, or spiteful at times ("Cave in on You", "They Told Me I Was a Fool"), but always have a certain pain to them. Most of the time, they work well with the lyrics.

The lyrics are the best aspect of this album. They are devastatingly personal, lonely, and heartbreaking. They describe the blasé, astray feeling that emerges from isolating oneself and living with the pain of rejection from the world.

The final track is a big surprise - it’s on electric guitar, and in quasi-standard tuning. It’s actually quite pleasant and melodic, yet still primitive and anxious.

With every listen, I notice something different about this album and how the tracks distinguish themselves from one another. The sarcastic cries of “big time in the city” on "Naked in the Afternoon", the desperate rhythm and repetition of "What Can I Say, What Can I Sing", the broken wails at the slowed ending of "They Told Me About You", the intensity and yelping peaks of "Cave In On You", and the spiteful narrative mastery of "They Told Me I Was a Fool" are my favorite moments within the thick of this album. "European Jewel (Incomplete)" is a peek into the world outside, but it stops before it’s enough to fully taste.

While this album doesn’t have the most immediate replay value, it’s one of the rawest depictions of loneliness and pain you’ll get, and one of the most outsider albums there is. When I do get around to replaying it, and I recognize a lyric, it becomes more meaningful, and I connect more personally with the artist.

9/10

Essential album?: Yes

Essential songs:
Naked in the Afternoon*
Cave in on You
They Told Me I Was a Fool
European Jewel (Incomplete)*

Susanna - Sonata Mix Dwarf Cosmos - Review

    

    The unfortunate circumstance of Susanna’s music is that her music will likely always be obscure. Her style is too esoteric to be listened to by anyone except the type of music critic who likes to listen to one album by an artist they don’t know and give it a numbered score after one listen. They’re probably going to rate it poorly, because they don’t know who Susanna is and they think this is boring, so why should they bother to give it praise, or a second listen and an in-depth analysis? However, I believe Susanna’s art goes deeper than the way that most people likely approach her music. Each part is more than an obscure album to rate; this album in particular is crucial to her unique, conceptual discography that holds a lot of personal value to me, and it requires more than one passive listen to fully understand. In fact, Susanna’s music was a gateway for me into both experimental and folk music throughout my teen years, which may seem hard to believe because of how unknown she is, but it’s a long story.

    Years after first hearing this album and exploring different folk music, I still don’t think I’ve heard anything as restrained, quiet, and sparse, and I love it for that. It’s unique within her discography in that, while Susanna’s music has always been minimalist and low-key, Sonata Mix Dwarf Cosmos is the peak of sparse, depressing, yet beautiful and simple songwriting. It’s her first “solo” album, the first one to feature entirely original songs, and the first to feature no electronic accompaniment, which already shows that this album is considered an important milestone for the singer, but represents an emotional nadir. 

    The album as a whole paints one picture, but after listening to it dozens of times, I see something different and special in each song, with every detail from Susanna’s vocal inflections to the instrumentation to the lyrics becoming more significantly meaningful to me. I can't give it anything less than a perfect score when I consider how much this album has meant to me all these years. This album is the feeling of stepping out onto a pristine layer of snow before sunrise while everyone is asleep. This album is also a moment of solitude within one’s room to reflect on a tumultuous experience. This album comforted me because it helped me know that someone else had the same need for a restrained quietness to understand the inner demons. 

    Susanna’s voice is clear and melodic, but sometimes rises just barely above a whisper on some of the saddest lyrics on the album. The instrumentation is subtle and very minimalist, but works effectively. Susanna plays the piano sparsely with long pauses, but not without purpose, and the melodies sometimes have a palpable darkness to them. Certain songs, such as “Demon Dance”, “We Offer”, and “Born in the Desert” shift toward darkness in their choruses and change the mood of the song. Guest musicians contribute to the atmosphere of the album without breaking it, such as the harpist on “Hangout”, the despairing, droning electric guitar on “Stay”, and the low, devious strings on “Demon Dance”.  

    Finally, the lyrics are what makes this album truly beautiful and relatable. The lyrics cover a few different personal, too-close-for-comfort topics, from a question of how we get our morals on “People Living”, to feeling alone within a broken family on “Home Recording”, but the main theme of the album is love and relationships. The album questions who’s the one at fault within the singer’s problematic relationship. “Hangout” longs for them to be together again, but “Stay” questions whether or not it’s worth it to remain together, and ultimately decides to stay. “For You” is a love song that makes references to Susanna’s real-life marriage to another musician and has her apologizing for her faults. However, the following “Demon Dance” highlights the conflict within the relationship again: “You intend / To keep hurting me / I admit / Gonna keep on loving you”, after which the singer changes the pronouns of the chorus from her lover to herself. Despite her inability to leave the relationship or determine who’s at fault, the album has hope, which shows itself in its emotional peak “Better Days”, and “Lily”, a prayer for the warmth of spring to come again. 

Rating: 5/5