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*