Antihoney - Night Birds - Review

Antihoney certainly has one of the most interesting stories of artists that I know. If you're here, you probably already know about her, but I will summarize it just in case. (I apologize if I get any facts wrong here.) In 2007, a mysterious album called As We Kill the Night appeared on the Internet. The music itself was mystical, with its experimental, glitchy, ethereal dream pop, and it gained a cult following. In the late 2010s, Antihoney came out of hiding and started posting online, announcing she was returning to music. Her new project was a rework of her old songs, DENDRITE. The album was more elaborate and hi-fi than the old, and I like it quite a bit. It wasn't that well received by old fans because of how different it was, but I quite liked the art pop/chamber pop direction - this is where most fans and I disagree.

Her next album, Secrets, strayed further away from her old style. It's also a good album, but it certainly has its issues - poor mixing and production, and not nearly as much of an epic concept as her older albums, as it feels rather cobbled together and goes towards a more simple pop style. Still, I wanted to support her in the midst of old fans who hated on her new stuff.

Night Birds, on the other hand, just amplifies everything that was wrong with Antihoney's new projects to an embarrassing degree. Antihoney covers 13 classic pop, rock, and folk songs with sparse, simple, unnoteworthy piano/pop instrumentals. I think Antihoney is a good singer, but the vocals here are just horrendous - they're mixed obnoxiously loud, making them sound too close for comfort, especially for someone that has such a pixie-like voice as hers. And on top of that, every single song has so much autotune to the point that it makes her voice sound extremely warped, wobbly, and awkward. The instrumentals and vocals just do nothing for me - which is even worse when you consider it's an album of just covers of extremely famous songs we've, no doubt, already heard covered hundreds of times, like "Hallelujah", "Africa", and "Imagine".

I was interested in Antihoney's new direction more than other fans were, but this album just shows she pretty much lost all the creative and mystical spark that was present in her early material. I know it's probably not supposed to be a super serious project in her discography - a side project, even - so I probably don't need to be so publicly harsh on it... but I mean come on, it's 56 minutes long and it felt like such a massive waste of my time that I felt like writing this review.

Jandek - Khartoum / Khartoum Variations - Review

Jandek - Khartoum

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Back to Jandek playing an atonal acoustic guitar and howling. I know I compare every album at this era to I Threw You Away, but that was truly the quintessential album that represents the despair and confusion of this era of Jandek. I find Khartoum to be pretty close in quality to I Threw You Away, but more barebones because it’s just the guitar and nothing fancy. The vocals are very dramatic, desperate, and exhausted. I got the same vibe as the aforementioned album from the lyrics as well: starkly and unabashedly depressed. I will probably listen to it again to get more into the nuances of the sound, but for now I will just analyze the lyrics.

“You Wanted to Leave” speaks of a problematic relationship. The singer describes the other as being uninterested in him and not as he expected, making them just part of a dream, and he also recognizes the damage he has done. He ends by comparing himself to the intrinsic beauty of the actions in nature. Very confessional song, but hard to follow.  “Fragmentation” is a sadly relatable song. It describes his difficulty in communication and being himself when all he feels inside is a “long blank stare”. 

“I Shot Myself” is depressing and visceral. He describes having shot himself atop a hill under the stars and being on the brink of death, but having sudden thoughts about goodness, mercy, and forgiveness. A very memorable moment. “New Dimension” sounds like a very personal letter to Jandek’s ex. He presumes that she is married, and warns her to be careful around himself if she is not because he thinks he’s harmful. He regrets taking her for granted because she was his world. This stings especially bad because of several previous albums that spoke of happiness in love, including the run from Shadow of Leaves to The Door Behind plus When I Took That Train. 

“Khartoum” is presumably about Jandek’s regrets in the same relationship. He describes his partner never having time for him combined with his instability and poor social skills making a weak relationship. He goes into a stream-of-consciousness about how he wishes he couldn’t think about it anymore. “In a Chair I Stare” is a very memorable song that I heard a long time ago before visiting the whole album. It reminds me of “What Things Are” from the previous album. The singer says that he has lost all control at the mercy of his brain, and all he can do is sit in a chair and stare, walk around, and then come back. The vocal delivery is tormented and devastating and I definitely feel bad for him.

“Move From the Mountain” continues the theme of regret. The song interestingly switches from first to second person, but is probably still about the same person. He says how he regrets moving away from the mountain, which probably represents the relationship, which he also regrets leaving behind. It ends with one of the best, most palpable lyrics on the album:

“And the world among men is so sad

I can sense my confidence splinter

Into pieces

Which bear your reflection

Why can’t I laugh and be happy?

What kind of vacuum took my enthusiasm?”

“Fork in the Road” describes the bareness and nothingness of depression again, but includes a glimmer of hope that he still sees the light and if he “turns to stone” or “flows like water”, then he can be anything instead of being nothing. The ending is satisfying to all the themes of this album. 

The emotions ran deep through this album and I felt very bad for Jandek while hearing the lyrics. The story forming from these past few albums has taken an even darker turn and his lyrics are more head-on depressive and regretful. It really strikes me how we are over 40 albums into the discography and the whole thing still feels like a big concept with a lot of lyrical connections and overarching themes. The musical style is nothing new here, but it is very solid. 

7.6/10

Essential album?: Yes

Essential songs:

In a Chair I Stare

Fork in the Road

Jandek - Khartoum Variations

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I agree with everyone that Khartoum Variations doesn’t need to exist. It’s basically the exact same album as Khartoum, minus the track “Fork in the Road”, and it’s performed on electric guitar with a similar technique to The End of It All. I think the songs themselves are great so I won’t give it a negative score, but I’m keeping in mind that this doesn’t really add that much to the original album - the structures and vocals are the same. The guitar adds some interesting improvisation, e.g. the intro to “New Dimension”, but it’s not “good”, it’s just a little different. And in fact it’s quite sloppy and sounds like the stuff I play when I’m bored and I just feel like randomly making noise on my electric guitar. 

5.5/10

Essential album?: No, just listen to Khartoum. 

Jandek - Raining Down Diamonds - Review

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Jandek goes back to singing with only a bass guitar and nothing else. I wasn’t really looking forward to hearing more of it, but I was pleasantly surprised with the first few tracks on Raining Down Diamonds. The sound of the bass is so deep, dark, and rich, and strummed/picked a lot more sparsely and abstractly than I remember on the previous 2 bass albums. I kind of freaked out when I heard it, and immediately joked to my friends, “Jandek has gone dark ambient”, because the bass really does sound like dark ambient. It doesn’t have the same type of ambience throughout the whole album, because there are some differently textured picking “solos” such as the one on “Take My Will”, but the atmosphere still remains. 

The vocal delivery isn’t super interesting. It’s very toned down and lethargic; there’s really no howling or screaming, which honestly made the most interesting moments on the past few albums. There is still a lot of genuine emotion, though. That emotion is mostly exhausted and depressed, though.

“What Things Are”, the most atmospheric track on the album, describes being in a dark cave and not knowing where things are, but suddenly it starts raining down diamonds and there is an amazing blinding dazzle of light. The musical style fits the imagery perfectly. The similar “I Stared” is simple and profound. The singer has forgotten everything and spends his time staring and not moving for hours, presumably because of depression, but he says he might get to know where he is and become satisfied if he knows “where you are”.

“You Ancient” is silly. He thanks the “ancients of the food god” for gifting him the privilege of knowing which things you can eat and still stay alive. “Take My Will” is very repetitive with the line “Jesus take my will / Take mine and make it yours”. The singer leaves his home to get on a train with a pack on his back and knows he’s going the right way. It reminds me of “Sticks in the Marsh” from A Kingdom He Likes, which was about choosing to abandon society and stay in a decrepit house, which is an interesting comparison because that song had the line “There is no God, God is everything / It’s all a picture we’re painting on the street”.

“New Rendezvous” has some of the most encouraging and refreshing lyrics I have ever heard from Jandek. “You’re only as young as your heart” is the key line and the song is about focusing on your heart and your thankfulness when you feel lonely or heavy in order to find true happiness and fulfillment. This is probably one of the most beautiful things Jandek ever wrote. “Your Visitor” doesn’t have an easily followable theme, but the main idea I take away is to value time spent with a loved one. 

There are some pretty great lyrics on this album, but not on every song. I really like the atmosphere of the bass and the calm vocals, but it’s also quite repetitive. I really enjoyed this album but I would not say it was great or that it impressed me. 

7/10

Essential album?: Maybe. Out of the 4 “Jandek plus bass guitar” albums, this would be my pick, so listen to this if you’re interested in that type of music. 

Essential songs:

What Things Are

New Rendezvous

Jandek - Glasgow Sunday - Review

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We’re finally at the live album era. I’m excited for this because Jandek’s live shows aren’t just any live shows. Each performance features entirely new music and lyrics, and different musical styles and guest musicians. I will be listening to all of these along with the rest of the studio albums. I have already heard a few of these because I was curious and I peeked ahead, so I have an idea of the amount of variety and experimentation that will come on these live records. Jandek live albums are always titled with the location of the show and the day of the week it happened (and occasionally the year), which will clue you in that the following review will be of a live Jandek album. 

Glasgow Sunday is a recording of Jandek’s first ever live performance at an experimental musical festival in Scotland. His appearance was unannounced, making his unveiling to the public eye a complete surprise. The lineup features Jandek on electric guitar, similarly tuned and played to the 00s studio albums, Richard Youngs on bass, and Alex Neilson on drums. 

I find the album to sound like an interesting mix of styles I’ve heard on past Jandek albums. The guitar style and vocal delivery is similar to the post-spoken word-era albums. The vocals can get really intense and powerful, most similar to I Threw You Away. I also find them much easier to follow than on a typical Jandek record because there are a lot of memorable lines, some repeated parts, and the vocal delivery is constantly changing in the same way the instrumentals are.

The combination of the electric guitar with the bass and the drums reminds me of early noise rock era Jandek somewhat, but the musicianship is more professional here. Youngs’ bass is very abstract and constantly rumbling and buzzing. It fits pretty perfectly with the guitar, considering both are improvised and chaotic. The bass is definitely one of the most interesting aspects, although there are a lot of interesting things about this performance in general. I could say the same thing about the drums. I find Neilson’s drums consistently engaging too. They sometimes get buried in the thick layers of sound from the guitar and bass, but usually their changing rhythms come through and give the songs some more direction. The drums are certainly less primitive than earlier Jandek records, sounding a bit lighter and in tune.

“Where I Stay” has very beautiful lyrics that I think are about dissociation. They describe not feeling, thinking, or seeing anything, and sitting in a room. “Darkness You Give” is a very dark love poem that has a couplet lyrical style. It describes the singer’s desire to be with who he loves, even if he has to be punished for what he’s done. I’m stunned at the beauty of it all.

“Sea of Red” has more lyrics that are shockingly depressing once you read through them. It describes a drowning scenario where the singer is begging for the redness that is drowning him to end his life already. The chaotic tone of the music gives these lyrics a different perspective than if we were to hear them on any other album. The following, more lighthearted, iconic “Real Wild” depicts the singer washing his clothes on an ordinary day, and deciding to “get real wild” because there’s nobody around. I love this concept.

Continuing the symbol of colors, “Blue Blue World” is sadly too relatable. The singer talks about a type of heavy, unavoidable depression that has nothing to do with his lover and causes him to not even think about her anymore. Very memorable song. The closer “The Other Side” is a pretty great story. “I’m gonna tell you a story / about a little girl / She broke my heart / When I was five / I’ve got so old now / Where’s the other half of my heart / I just can’t find it, the other side”.

I’m just as impressed with this album’s lyrics as I am with the music. I think this is truly one of Jandek’s greatest, and I will continue to listen to it to discover more of what each individual song holds. I think each track has some very great moments to offer. 

8/10

Essential album?: Yes

Essential songs:

Darkness You Give

Sea of Red

Real Wild*

The Other Side

Jandek - When I Took That Train - Review

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I find When I Took That Train to be one of the most interesting Jandek albums in a while. The musical style is essentially the exact same as the previous few albums from Jandek, so I don’t really need to discuss it at all (assuming you've read my previous Jandek reviews). The lyrics and vocal delivery are what make it interesting, and also disturbing. 

First of all, I found the lyrics very easy to follow even while I was focusing on drawing, which was honestly a first for Jandek considering how poetically dense his lyricism usually is. The album revolves around one concept that is similar to a lot of the ideas about love/romance and infatuation that The End of It All and The Door Behind focus on, but it amplifies them to an extreme, ironic level. The lyrics revolve around the singer’s unhealthy obsession with his object of love, or maybe I should say object of “like”. Continuing the theme from The Door Behind, the singer is obsessed with being “liked” by this woman and keeps repeating some variation of “I like you” or “and then you’ll like me”. There are also a lot of references to physical and sexual attraction between them, which can get quite uncomfortable, and at some points it sounds like Jandek is straight up flirting with the audience. 

The vocal delivery is more spoken than sung. It reminds me a bit of old school blues. He even puts on a “flirty” tone to add to the lyrics, which gets uncomfortable, but adds to the whole ironic concept. The last few songs diverge from the theme of the rest of the album and change the tone, but still have some connections with the rest of it. The theme of the album reminds me of the super long songs from the spoken word era because they push an ironic, exaggerated concept for so long, that you’re not even sure if it’s ironic anymore. Yeah, late era Jandek isn’t exactly the artist you’re most willing to hear with this type of attitude. But I will say that this is one of the most fascinating and shocking and even disturbing Jandek albums I have heard in a while. 

I have already summarized the majority of the lyrical content, so I will just go on with a few highlights. “Wouldn’t You Agree” has a memorable moment where he sings “because it’s all about” and you expect the next word to be “you”, but it’s actually “God”, which I think is intended to be ironic because of how the singer worships his woman in all the other songs. The song also mentions what sounds like some pretty unhealthy relationship aspects. Jandek insists that he is a rock that will not change, but immediately after, he talks about how he will change for her, and how they both have to change to meet each other’s standards.

“Angel Moves” has another one of these shocking moments, starting with the lyric “I think the goal of life is / Make a man feel like a god”. He describes someone getting into an accident on the road, and their angel saving them. There is one part with a very intense, memorable vocal howl. 

On “Thing Called Me” the singer talks about his life in “the corner of your existence” for “six million years”. The only thing I can think is that it feels like an unfiltered declaration of self. 

The final song “My Escape” is a journey of a song. It starts with the singer being trapped by a spider, and begging to be set free to get back to his house, but all he needs is the door. He also speaks of the addressee dying for him. The song ends on a very depressing note that sounds like he regrets what he said on all the previous songs.

“I don’t know what I’m becoming 

I can’t see past my eyes, it seems 

But I’ll take the green blood 

Turn it red inside of me 

I’ll take your hand inside my body 

Reach in your heart 

Take it out for food 

Eat my heart out 

Take the rest of me inside of you”

I can understand why someone would think this album is annoying, but I do think a lot of the lyricism is worthwhile despite being a little repetitive or uncomfortable. It certainly shows that Jandek has always been a very unique artist who hasn’t run out of ideas. 

7/10

Essential album?: Yes

Essential songs: 

Angel Moves

Jandek - A Kingdom He Likes - Review

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A Kingdom He Likes is Jandek’s lowest rated album on rateyourmusic.com right now, which is honestly quite an achievement considering the amount of albums he has. However, I didn’t think it was that bad at all, and I don’t think that’s just me having sympathy for this under-appreciated album (as I tend to do with a lot of other artists). It’s a similar type of album to I Threw You Away and The Humility of Pain with repetitive atonal acoustic strumming and howling vocals. I would say it’s not as good as those, but it had a few moments that shocked me or that I thought were pretty funny. 

The guitar technique had decent variation at times, but only ended up being slightly interesting. The lyrics remind me of the Staring at the Cellophane-Living in a Moon so Blue duo because of the random moments that stood out to me. The vocals are pretty decent. They’re very painful, although still nothing lives up to the voice from “Blues Turned Black” or the vocal style from the earlier Jandek albums. 

I don’t really follow “I Gave My Eternity”, but there’s a few lines I can pick out that I like. 

“I gave my eternity

Gave it away

And you can find it under your sway

Whoever calls it night is not serious enough

At night I’ve gone back to where I came from

I see my journey in a thousand ways

Take off your mask now

Reveal yourself

Come out and show me

You beautiful thing

I’ll just be me here in the space around me”

“Real Afternoons” starts with an ironic description of the refrigerator as an altar. The moment he sings “Straight and erect” has me thinking he’s listening to “Vertebrae by Vertebrae” by Bjork, but, well, this album came 3 years before Volta. “Skank, you skank” was one of the funny moments of the album and completely changes the subject of the song to telling someone to bug off.

“A Windy Time” feels like a random little ditty about a business meeting, of all things. I like the lyric “I don’t need a smoke alarm to tell me there’s a fire / And I still have the sense of smell and heat and cold”.

“Your Own Little World” was another one of the moments that stood out to me on my first listen. It describes a grotesque situation where Jandek’s house is infested with spiders and different types of mold, and how the spiders are so powerful that they practically own the house now and Jandek just submits to them. Gross, but symbolic.

“Sticks in the Marsh” is about the singer sleeping overnight in an old abandoned house and having a Thoreau moment, rejecting society to instead travel among nature. He seeks guidance from the “man sun God”, and then ends the song with a bold statement: “There is no God, God is everything / It’s all a picture we’re painting on the street”.

“No One Knows Your Name” starts with a personal commitment to getting some bad thing out of himself that’s causing him pain. The middle of the song quickly changes the subject and maybe somewhat connects to the topic but mostly looks like random imagery. I like the last line “I got my demons strangled by the throat”. Weird song. 

“It Rang Eleven Times” starts with Jandek describing having programmed his own organs to have full control over them. Then it suddenly changes to daring someone to jump off a cliff without looking down and laughing all they want. But he sings “I’ll never go with you / I’m the one that’s there”. More confusion.

Well, the lyrics aren’t that great. There are some very wacky ideas and a few profound moments scattered throughout the album, and a lot of mishmash subject matters. There definitely isn’t an overarching theme like the last 2 albums, which focused on relationships. I still think this is better than the mediocre 90s acoustic albums such as Glad to Get Away and White Box Requiem, however, just because of the general musical style of this new era. 

6/10

Essential album?: No

Essential songs:

Your Own Little World