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*
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