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*
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