Jandek - " The Myth Of The Blue Icicles " (Corwood 0790) 2008

Songs

Too Course (7:30) / Blue Icicles (9:45) / The Daze (14:29) / There’s No Door (5:11)

His 52nd (who’s still really counting?) album, appropriately titled The Myth of Blue Icicles and released by Corwood Industries, is, to be as precise as possible, a Jandek album. All the classical Jandek marks are present: the tangled acoustic guitar that manages to clash with itself; the deep, cat-scratchy vocals that sound like they were only achieved after a lifetime of swallowing sandstorms; and the lyrics that are part-confessional, part-epic poetry, and part-one-half of a conversation that might be ruined were we to hear the other half. Jandek manages to be on the razor’s edge of what music is, what music means, while at the same time being one of the steadiest, most dependable artists in the whole of today’s musical landscape. He manages to create some of the most inscrutable, arcane walls of sound, while giving us the sense that we could not possibly be closer to the center of the producer. Even if it were possible, it might be the kind of experience that would put everyone involved in some type of danger.
Essentially, The Myth of Blue Icicles feels like both progress and regression, but what else is new? One new feeling that we can’t help getting on this album, especially when the first lines out of the wizard’s mouth are "I’m sorry I must have appeared too coarse/ And unrefined/ I must have seemed like an animal/ And a clumsy one too/But you had some endurance and so did I," is the feeling that he knows us, and that the mind behind the curtain is, in some way, reaching out.
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Jandek - " Glasgow Sunday " (Corwood 0792) 2008

Songs

The Grassy Knoll (25:26) / Tribal Ether (24:47)

MORE Live Jandek????
The credit on the back says “RECORDED LIVE: THE ARCHES GLASGOW SCOTLAND OCTOBER 16, 2005”. On the first track the representative from Corwood delivers a long spoken narrative. He also sings and plays harmonica. He is backed by Loren Connors on electric guitar. On the second track, the rep plays drum kit, with Heather Leigh Murray on lap steel guitar and wordless vocals and Alan Licht on electric guitar.

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Jandek - " Worthless Recluse " (Corwood 0769) 2001

Songs

The Clothes (1:09) / In the Cave (5:53) / Out of the Cave (4:34) / Stopped (2:14) / Interlude (1:57) / The Dunes (1:29) / Aimless Breeze (2:00) / You Wake Up Deadmen (3:30) / Worthless Recluse (17:10) / Lofty Rider (1:25) / The Stars Spell Your Name (2:17) / Your Turn (1:31) / You Won’t Get Up (1:12)

Lyrics

For me, this is probably the most strange and avant garde Jandek release. A collection of unaccompanied disjointed poetry delivered in an unsyncopated stacatto style. Long silences permeate the stanza's , and the obvious interjection of a noise gate after each short phrase, make the silences even silenter. The exact opposite of Pop, and the real sound of rebellion.
Love the cover shot, and the self-analytical title.
Worthless Recluse does away with any tunefulness and goes for straight ahead spoken word inter-galactic beat poetry, a perfect sonic distillation of Burroughs' aforementioned cut-up techniques. Why this hasn't been taken more seriously by the spoken-words/poetry scene as a major work is a travesty of the highest order.


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Jandek - " The Beginning " (Corwood 0766) 1999

Songs

It’s February (2:04) / You Standing There (3:05) / I Never Left You Anyway (4:00) / Moving Slow (3:58) / Falling Down Deep (4:32) / Lonesome Bridge (4:00) / A Dozen Drops (6:17) / The Beginning (15:29)

“...a fine return to the 'pure' Jandek sounds of Six and Six, the production is murky, vocals thick with reverb and the guitars plunk and strut along in a bluesy swagger... the biggest farewell to the 21st century comes with his reality-twisting-Black Hole that is the title track. A fifteen minute dirge on a new instrument — the piano — that sounds like the first thrill you got when you played a piano as a kid and you thought you could play flashy all over the keyboard like Johnny Johnson or Jerry Lee Lewis or Liberace. Jandek actually plays the piano with the same manic gusto that he plays guitar, occasionally bashing it, occasionally finding moments of beauty. It reminds me a bit of Sun Ra's playing on ‘Gods on Safari’... ”

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Jandek - " Twelfth Apostle " (Corwood 0760) 1993

Songs

Side 1: Walking (3:06) / You’re Not Even Alive (3:35) / Native Land (3:53) / Rooftop Sunset (2:18) / Bedside (2:48) / Solid Stone (2:41); Side 2: Out in the Rain (3:12) / The Gone Wait (3:23) / Could Be Anyone (2:56) / Twelfth Apostle (4:25) / White Knob (3:17) / Whiskers (2:13) / Four by Four (2:50)

Lyrics

After a spate of uncharacteristically revealing album covers, Jandek hides again. Color photo of the back of a house in bright daylight. Several windows are visible and the curtains on all of them are of course drawn tight. There is a brick garage behind the house with a yellow birdhouse (?) on top of it. It’s conceivably the same house as on the cover of You Walk Alone; white color and width of siding match, but there’s no way to be sure. It’s definitely not the house from Telegraph Melts though; the garage doesn’t match.
The most “pure” Jandek album since Blue Corpse — rock and/or blues overtones are basically absent. All-acoustic, one guitar only, no drums, three to four minute songs. A heavyhanded echo effect surrounds the guitar on some of side two. Mood is thorny, ambivalent, a little impersonal, serious but not depressed like Blue Corpse. This is the first album in Jandek’s “late period”; stylistically, it resembles the CD’s that follow, not the LP’s that came before. I think he didn't quite hit his stride in this style until the next two albums.

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Jandek - " Lost Cause " (Corwood 0759) 1992

Songs

Side 1: Green and Yellow (4:07) / Babe I Love You (4:03) / Cellar (1:39) / How Many Places (2:54) / Crack a Smile (2:59) / God Came Between Us (3:25) / I Love You Now It’s True (2:50); Side 2: The Electric End (19:18)

“Babe I Love You” is an almost straight pop song with a lilting rhythm — very untypical! “The Electric End” is an epic side-long improv jam, with crazed vocals appearing only near the beginning of eighteen minutes of instrument-bashing, mostly guitar and drums but also including some sort of high-pitched whistle (?), played with abandon. This is the last LP in Jandek’s “middle period”.
“The last chapter in Jandek's BOOGIE period... ‘Babe I Love You’ is a cute, hooky little number that could even be hit (or a college/indie hit). ‘Crack a Smile’ finds our man playing pretty competent, mellow strummy guitar, and does his best Tim Buckley impersonation... Then things start to change. It seems that Jandek purchased some new recording equipment as well as a new out-of-tune steel string guitar [for the rest of side 1]. Album closer ‘The Electric End’ is Jandek’s version of ‘L.A. Blues’ or ‘Journey Through the Outer Darkness’ or Coltrane's ‘Om’. Nineteen minutes of atonal, psychotic BLARE featuring noise, crash, howl, one of those bird whistles and someone trying to make that weird sound that the 13th Floor Elevators did on ‘You're Gonna Miss Me’. After 4 minutes, I get a piercing migraine.”

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Jandek - " One Foot In The North " (Corwood 0758) 1991

Songs

Side 1: Yellow Pages (6:57) / Angel (3:17) / Show the Man Your Picture (1:51) / Think About Your Lady (2:41) / Real Fine Movement (2:36) / Alehouse Blues (3:10); Side 2: Upon the Grandeur (8:27) / Phoenix (4:43) / Dreaming Man (3:33) / Breast in a Moonbeam (2:32) / Honey (1:20)

“This album sounds like a bit of a pastiche of out-takes and recordings from his BLUE and PURPLE periods with a bit of BOOGIE thrown in for good measure... ‘Upon the Grandeur’ lives up to its title — eight and a half minutes of beautiful panoramic balladry, oozing atmosphere, another Jandek classic...”

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Jandek - " Somebody In The Snow " (Corwood 0757) 1990

Songs

Side 1: Tell Me Who You Are (3:48) / Come Through With a Smile (5:52) / I May Not Be Around (2:03) / Pastimes (3:15) / Om (2:27) / Bring It In a Manger (2:17); Side 2: Walking Around (2:48) / Sense of Reason (2:00) / Remind You (2:32) / Corner of the Street (2:51) / Stick With Me (2:42) / What You Give Me (3:05) / You Sing a Song (1:33) / Walking Home (2:03)

Side 1 features Nancy’s sister Pat, who we first heard on one song on Chair Beside a Window. We know her name from a 1982 letter from Corwood quoted in Irwin Chusid’s book. The letter doesn’t confirm that the singer on this record is also Pat, but my ears say it is. There’s a lot of hard stereo separation on this album: lyrics decipherers man your balance knobs. Note the “Bowery / Beacon Hill” trope in “Remind You” which was also used in “Quinn Boys” and “Quinn Boys II”. They’re both old-time skid rows (in New York and Seattle)... anyone know if always pairing them like that might come from a specific source? It sounds repeated from something. Side 2 sounds like it was all recorded together. The hard stereo separation and the way the instruments don’t sound like they were recorded in the same acoustic space suggest that it was assembled by overdubbing. This could be the session that Corwood referred to in a letter to Irwin Chusid where all the instruments were overdubbed by the representative himself. “Remind You” has the rep doing separate vocal tracks in the left and right channel, and they even overlap at one point, so that’s definitely overdubbed.
At the beginning of the album when the male singer says “All right, all right.... alllll right... It’s all riiiiight....”: it is. It is completely all right. How could it be any better? On “Remind You”, when Jandek says “are you serious when you say my name” it sounds like Dylan to me (mentally I follow it with Dylan’s “Honey I can’t believe that you’re for real” from “On the Road”). The a cappella track “Om” sticks out because it’s so out of character, and “Bring It In a Manger”, well, I hardly to know what to say about it. It’s singular. It’s definitely the best Christmas song ever, and certainly the only one with the word “genitals” in it. Though Pat isn’t as strong a singer as her sister, “Come Through With a Smile” is the track where she makes the best case for herself. On the same track, I also really like the way the drums underscore the lead guitar.
“As lush as untuned guitars recorded on a 4-track can get (closer than you think)... Jandek’s muse continues to progress.”

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Jandek - " On The Way " (Corwood 0755) 1988

Songs

Side 1: Wrap It Up (3:04) / Bring It Back to Seventy-Five (2:29) / Message to the Clerk (6:46) / Give It the Name (5:33) / Ambient Instrument (2:23) / Sadie (2:20); Side 2: I’ll Sit Alone and Think a Lot About You (8:50) / The Only Way You Can Go (5:28) / I’m Ready (5:45)

Wins the award for all-time most indistinct Jandek cover photo thus far, and that’s no small feat. Very dark interior of a house with the silhouette of a drumkit and some piece of furniture (or possibly a piano?) only barely visible in the dim light that filters through the drawn curtain. Photo is in color, not that you’d notice unless you looked very closely. This is one of those pictures that the photo lab gives you a refund on.
“The most varied and easily-accessed Corwoodian brain-scrambler in a while... Of course, if you pay close attention you discover that the central core is as explosively cathartic as any of Jandek’s previous recs.”
“Every Jandek record is a letter as personal as it is anonymous. Listening to a new one I get the feeling I should not be listening at all... To study, analyze, and ponder over these private soundtracks is quite immoral.”

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Jandek - " You Walk Alone " (Corwood 0754) 1988

Songs

Side 1: Lavender (3:37) / Time and Space (7:15) / The Cat That Walked From Shelbyville (6:23) / Quinn Boys II (4:00); Side 2: The Way That You Act (4:25) / I Know the Times (3:11) / When the Telephone Melts (9:09) / War Dance (4:05)

It’s hard to pick one single album as Jandek’s best considering the constant change in style, but this is my favorite. It’s tuneful enough to be tolerable, but not too much that it isn’t Jandek anymore. This is space-blues-rock at its weirdest... When this album is taken in comparison to some of the Early Period stuff, it’s hard to imagine how they could be the same artist. The songs here sound thought out and possibly rehearsed, but still spontaneous, like the hoot and holler of ‘War Dance’. Jandek makes his most accessible album not by abandoning his basic style but adding into it a more solid interpretation of the blues. He manages to capture not just the music but the spirit of the recordings. It sounds like he’s having a lot of fun, and that fun rubs off on the listener as well... When put in comparison with other blues-rock albums, it’s a piece of trash, but within the context of Jandek’s bizarre catalog, You Walk Alone may very well be the best album you’ve ever heard.”

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Jandek - " Blue Corpse " (Corwood 0753) 1987

Songs

Side 1: I Passed By the Building (3:44) / C F (2:07) / Variant (1:44) / Part II (1:45) / Your Other Man (5:36) / Long Way (0:50) / Down at the Ball Park (2:14); Side 2: Harmonica (5:04) / House of the Rising Sun (4:34) / Only Lover (10:48) / Quinn Boys (1:52) / One Minute (1:00)

Jandek goes acoustic again after a long run of mostly electric LP’s, but this is quite different from the early acoustic LP’s. The songs are more musically and emotionally distinct, though this is attained partially through a much more conventional, strumming-based style on acoustic guitar. (Perhaps it’s the same, more conventionally adept guitarist who plays electric on the next album.) For most of the LP, Jandek adopts a distinct vocal style, higher pitched and more breathy. Nancy has disappeared, and a lot of the songs are about a breakup. Did they break up and this LP is the aftermath? We don’t know, but the sequencing of the albums has always given me that impression.
“This ain’t exactly tuneful in the Goffin-King sense... but it is his most accessible. The trademark disconnected barren landscapes still flit through his lyrics, and the vocals are still anguished, though in a soft moaning way rather than the blood-curdling manic half-scream that he’s also been known to favor. Instead of flailing about on an untuned guitar, he now sticks almost exclusively to conventional, non-dissonant chords, usually with a folky strum that echoes down-home blues and early 70’s acoustic Neil Young... which is not to say that yer average listener won’t find this unfathomably demented compared to any other solo acoustic songwriter album you can name.”

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Jandek - " Follow Your Footsteps " (Corwood 0751) 1986

Songs

Side 1: Honey (3:13) / What Do You Want to Sing (2:11) / Jaws of Murmur (4:50) / Preacher (3:50) / Didn’t Ask Why (4:10) / Leave All You Have (3:48); Side 2: I Know You Well (3:13) / Dearly Need Some Words (4:16) / Straight Thirty Seconds (3:00) / Bring on Fatima (2:40) / For Today (3:49) / Collection (3:41) / We’re All Through (1:19)

“The most song-oriented Jandek yet, with genuine rhythms & strums, percussion so minimal as to be near nonexistent, a rare second guitar or vocals. Sorta like Phil Spector’s worst nightmare.”

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Jandek - " Telegraph Melts " (Corwood 0750) 1986

Songs

Side 1: You (1:33) / One the Planes (2:43) / Go to Bed (2:44) / Ace of Diamonds (4:45) / Twenty-Four (5:07) / No Slow Ones (3:16) / Telegraph Melts (4:10); Side 2: Governor Rhodes (5:17) / Star Up in the Sky (3:29) / You Painted Your Teeth (2:55) / Mothers Day Card (2:02) / The Fly (3:35) / House Up On the Hill (2:14)

Lyrics

In “You Painted Your Teeth”, Jandek frenziedly harangues an unknown second person: “Don’t paint your teeth! You painted your teeth! DON’T PAINT YOUR TEETH!” The title “Governor Rhodes” may refer to James A. Rhodes, the Ohio governor who ordered the National Guard into Kent State; the song itself is a sort of incantation with Jandek and “Nancy” repeating after each other “Celebrate our love, celebrate our magic, chant with love, chant always,” etc., in endless variations.
“Jandek lives next door to someone far away, someplace where ‘music’ is an expression of emotion and not a packaged entertainment; made for self, rather than for an audience... There’s some sorta feeling trapped in the sound that I like to bask in.”
“While firmly entrenched in the ‘classic’ Jandek sound of open-chord guitar pluckery and vocals that teeter on the brink of losing what little grip of sanity was there, this album stands out for a surprisingly consistent rhythmic attack on the first six tracks. Jandek hammers at his abused drumkit with locomotive rigor and intensity rarely heard in any of the previous recordings; of course, he inevitably loses control of the rhythm and sends it tumbling down the stairs. The rest of the tracks are far more loose in the rhythmic structure. Again, the woman who may be known as Nancy sings on a couple of tracks: one of which finds her sounding more like Jandek with a strained, atonal vibrato. Towards the end of the album, there are a couple of tracks in which a third male voice appears.”

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Jandek - " Foreign Keys " (Corwood 0749) 1985

Songs

Side 1: Spanish in Me (5:35) / Lost Cause (4:31) / Caper (5:40) / Uncle Steve (2:28) / Don’t Be So Mean (2:08) / Coming Quiet (2:22); Side 2: Needs No Sun (3:11) / Oh No (2:35) / Some of Your Peace (2:35) / Put It Away (4:25) / Ballad of Robert (3:50) / River to Madrid (4:50)

“‘Coming Quiet’ finds Jandek trying to do some sort of surf/noir instrumental, before losing patience and making the whole thing fall into a frustrated heap. Guest vocalist Nancy returns with her female touch. She sounds more ‘assertive’ or angry on this album... ‘Ballad of Robert’ is one of the most unglamorous, accurate, and realistic odes to serious mental illness ever committed to record...”

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Jandek - " Nine-Thirty " (Corwood 0748) 1985

Songs

Side 1: Tell Me When (2:12) / Left the Beach Last Sunday (2:17) / Bells and Voices (2:30) / Faye (2:54) / Wrong Time (2:23) / Voices in the Dark (1:56) / Green Dreams (2:10) / Blind Cat (2:52); Side 2: Georgia East (2:47) / May 3 (2:47) / Nine-Thirty (2:42) / This is a Death Dream (5:04) / Tumblings (2:36) / You Didn’t Lie (2:04) / Oh Jenny (2:07)

“After the raucous squalor of Interstellar Discussion, [this] is certainly his come-down record. It’s always difficult to tell how much of the Jandek oeuvre is the result of a psychological problem and how much is consciously constructed aesthetics. So in saying that this is a come-down record could be the result of either or both. Jandek’s voice is hushed, his guitar plucks quieter, and the drums untouched.”

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Jandek - " Interstellar Discussion " (Corwood 0747) 1984

Songs

Side 1: Starless (2:16) / Hey (3:13) / Why Did I Change a Word in the Last Song (3:05) / Waltz in Two-Fourths Time (3:01) / Call You the Sun (3:18) / I Ain’t Got None (3:18) / The Spirit (2:25); Side 2: Rifle in the Closet (3:52) / Sung (1:33) / Ha Ha (2:15) / Customary (2:54) / May 7, 9:15 A.M. (2:54) / Situations (2:31) / Couldn’t Be a Reader (2:25) / Kick (4:00)

Mostly electric. Jandek really cuts loose vocally on “I Ain’t Got None” (he is quite adamant about not having any whatsoever). “Hey” has two overdubbed {???} vocal tracks (both Jandek, I think) and the title is also the lyrics (like the Butthole Surfers song of the same name — it must be in the air in Texas). The name of the next song after “Hey” is “Why Did I Change a Word in the Last Song”. The lyrics of “Rifle in the Closet” have nothing to do with the title until the very end of the song, which runs, “‘The Rifle in the Closet’ is just the name of this song.” There is a phone number in this same song: “The theater’s been dripping/ The movie’s 3-D/ There’s two rides to Texas/ 547-3668/ Hey John...” “Kick” is about a junkie and is played all on one guitar string (well, maybe two a little towards the end), and mostly just the same note on that string. (Compare the beginning of the Velvet Underground’s “Heroin”.)
“Jandek sounds like he’s locked in a cellar with some musical instruments and he’s pissed off about it... There’s ‘drums’ of a sort, though a bit like Mo Tucker, they don’t so much keep the beat as corral it into a corner and whack it over the head with a lead pipe; it’s a bored three year old with a wooden spoon and a tumble dryer. His [guitar] playing — even over all these years — stubbornly refuses to improve... every so often, you need to be reminded of the depths of the human psyche, and listening to this racket affirms that.”

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Jandek - " Your Turn To Fall " (Corwood 0745) 1983

Songs

Side 1: Liquids Flow to the Sea (4:14) / Elementary Talk (2:24) / John Plays Drums (2:28) / No Time (2:00) / You Don’t Have to Entertain Me (1:53) / Decree (1:51) / New String (2:18) / Echo (2:43); Side 2: Centaur Train (2:26) / Dance of Death (2:22) / If Your Fortune Fails You (2:58) / I’ll Come Back (2:52) / About Today (2:08) / Such a Thrill (1:35) / Didn’t Have to Cry (2:15) / They Knew My Game (3:12)

A desk with a guitar case next to it. First color photo since the first LP.

Title of “Liquids Flow to the Sea” reiterates river theme. “John Plays Drums” is the first appearance of an outside instrumentalist on a Jandek record; it’s another version, with Jandek on vocals, of the song previously recorded as “Nancy Sings”.

Review excerpts

• GK, Op issue X. “He continues to moan like a modern Robert Johnson type... A dark, suicidal void.”
• Eddie Flowers. Quoted at The History of Rock Music, Vol. 4 (website). “‘Typical’ all-acoustic early-80s Jandek, which means it was produced in the cold-sun heat of a state knowable only to the artist himself. Some highlights: the hard-picked philosophy of “Elementary Talk”; drummer John pounding freely on “John Plays Drums” with Jandek strumming violently and shouting to be heard (he makes it); the droney psych-folk on “Dance of Death”... “If Your Fortune Fails You” full of Dylan-pathos; the claustrophobic closer, “They Knew My Game,” with distorted mouth-on-mic vocals and what sounds like a dying music box in the background.”
• uncredited, Aquarius Records catalog (website), 2002?. “While Your Turn To Fall is not as good as Blue Corpse or Ready For the House it stands as one of the stronger, more musical outings for one of the great outsider musicians this world has gotten the chance to hear.”
• Aaron Goldberg, web review for Perfect Sound Forever. “[The] desk, guitar case and couch... fit in PERFECTLY with Jandek's suburban-blues aesthetic... I can only take about 20 seconds of the retarded, over-loud, un-rhythmic drumming on [‘John Plays Drums’]... ‘Dance of Death’ features a really nice vocal performance. When Jandek sings well, he's pretty darn good in an Alan Vega echoey sort of way.”

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Jandek - " Staring at the Cellophane " (Corwood 0744) 1982

Songs

Side 1: Michael (2:57) / This is For You (3:10) / Riddles Riddling Me (2:44) / Basic Themes (2:50) / I See Lights (2:34) / Rather Be Blind (1:53) / Away (2:18) / Don’t Get Too Upset (2:35); Side 2: A Letter (2:23) / Nevermore (3:01) / Sand I (2:30) / Nepoleon [sic] in Russia (3:05) / Split to the East (2:55) / Number 14 (2:43) / Blood and Bone (3:17)

Lyrics

Data

The date does not appear on the back cover as on most LP’s, only on the label on side 1 of the record. The “I” in “Sand I” is handwritten rather than typeset on both the back cover and the label.

Review excerpts

• Calvin Johnson, Op issue U, pg 60. “...ghost town music... Spooky, personal, honest, it fills the room, sets the moods. I return to Jandek, feel compelled to place Staring at the Cellophane or Six and Six on the turntable...”
• Eddie Flowers. Quoted at The History of Rock Music, Vol. 4 (website). “The focus here is on a very singular mid-tempo acoustic-guitar sound, with special attention to finger pickin’. The instrumental “This Is For You” and semi-instrumental “Basic Themes” (just a bit of wordless vocalizing at the end) stand out, and even most of the other pieces seem more concerned with the guitar than Jandek’s usual depressed lyrical statements. The big exceptions are the muted hard-strum violence of “Sound I”, which is mostly instrumental but quite different from the melancholy plucked-string approach; and a weird history lesson called “Nepoleon in Russia” [sic].”
• uncredited, Aquarius Records catalog (website), 2002?. “The cover of Jandek’s sixth album... is nearly identical to Living In A Moon So Blue. Furthermore, the open chord guitar pick & strum barely structuring the vocal wisp and waver from Jandek is nearly indistinguishable on these two albums. It may be a bold question to ask, but is the content from Jandek’s faded photographs to be seen as indicative of what can be found inside?”
• Aaron Goldberg, web review for Perfect Sound Forever. “The downward spiral continues... Maybe Jandek was deconstructing his work in order to take his next artistic step...”

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Jandek - " Living in a Moon so Blue " (Corwood 0743) 1982

Songs

Side 1: Gretchen (2:47) / One Step Ahead (2:06) / Supression (2:06) / Strange Phenomenon (3:09) / You Can Stop Now (2:20) / Comedy (1:49) / Sailors (1:47) / Bludgeon (1:50) / All in an Apple Orchard (2:37); Side 2: She Fell Down (3:30) / Professional (2:25) / Anticipation (2:43) / Alexandria Knows (2:34) / Quite Nonchalant (2:16) / Relief of the Night (3:18) / Crime Pays (3:00)

Lyrics

Another all acoustic LP, but an uncommonly emphatic, even aggressive one — Jandek really digs in on the vocals and guitar, sounding downright sardonic on songs like “You Can Stop Now” and “Professional”, with lyrics to match. Sometimes he plucks the strings so hard that the notes begin buzzy and bend in pitch. But there are also some very delicate songs like “All in an Apple Orchard”.

Review excerpts

• John DeAngelis, Op issue S. “Jandek plays acoustic guitar — seemingly without any formal chordal knowledge — and sings in a drifty, sometimes eerie voice that suggests he listened to a lot of obscure psychedelic music, and maybe some Doors and acoustic Neil Young, too. Over the course of a three-minute song, not a lot of lyrical or musical development takes place; you might find this hard to sit through...”
• Christopher Stigliano, Op issue T, pg. 71. “Yet again... another LP of atonal guitar with moaning vocals that remind me of the delta blues played by a member of the Godz... Totally incomprehensible and grating on the nerves... Who says that art has to be pretty anyway?”
• Billy Kiely, Forced Exposure web site (http://www.forcedexposure.com/), 2000. “The title for this one actually comes from a lyric from his track ‘Can I See Your Clock’ from his second LP Six And Six, and so one can already see The Artist creating an oeuvre filled with allusions, hints, motifs that really don’t point at anything in particular. Herein lies one of Jandek’s peculiar charms: his songs’ resilience. We find him in a more ‘aggressive’ mode here — singing and playing here like he really ‘means it’; therein lies another charm: we are never really sure what he means. All in all, Living in a Moon So Blue is one of his best, the presentation and approach seemingly from a different time altogether, how about some grayish Eastern Bloc country, ca. 1962?”
• Eddie Flowers. Quoted at The History of Rock Music, Vol. 4 (website). “The mood is kinda upbeat, and the playing is particularly assertive (still “untuned” and moving freely, though). There are songs about “Gretchen” and “Alexandria Knows” (with harmonica that starts like a squealing synth)... One of the best Jandek albums.”
• Aaron Goldberg, web review for Perfect Sound Forever. “This is where Jandek's stuff gets really ‘difficult’ and damaged... Lots of pissed-off down strokes, tracks that build into blister-inducing dirges and just some seriously fucked up mess all around. The album feels like a series of sketches that Jandek just bashed out quite quickly...”

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Jandek - " Chair Beside a Window " (corwood 0742) 1982

Songs

Side 1: Down in a Mirror (4:25) / European Jewel (4:24) / Unconditional Authority (3:29) / Poor Boy (2:30) / You Think You Know How To Score (2:16) / Nancy Sings (2:43); Side 2: No Break (3:18) / Mostly All From You (2:52) / Blue Blister (2:40) / The Times (3:10) / Love, Love (4:07) / The First End (4:24)

“European Jewel” reappears. “Nancy Sings” is the first appearance by an outside vocalist on a Jandek record. Another woman singer turns up on the next track, “No Break”. As Jandek plays guitar she exclaims jokingly, “You’re a jerk! You’re nuts!” In a 1982 letter to Irwin Chusid, Corwood says the singer on this track is Nancy’s sister Pat. We’ll hear her again later on Somebody in the Snow.

Review excerpts

• uncredited, Forced Exposure web site (http://www.forcedexposure.com/), 2000. “Notable for the track “Nancy Sings” which features the first appearance by an outside vocalist on a Jandek record — an absolutely riveting acoustic gospel-blues tinged track.”
• Eddie Flowers. Quoted at The History of Rock Music, Vol. 4 (website). “The echo-drenched journey into Jandek’s world begins with “Down in a Mirror”, the artist delicately plucking his free-tuned guitar and tappin’ shoes on the floor ’neath him. And then electricity! Jandek’s first electric-guitar piece, “European Jewel,” comes screamin’ in like Elmore James having a seizure. Pounding drums and bass enter for a frenzied attack not too far from the same thing Sonic Youth was doing in NYC at the same time. Back to acoustic guitar for “Unconditional Authority,” a depressed semi-boogie, and near perfect blend of solo Syd Barrett and John Lee Hooker at his loneliest. “Poor Boy” comes mighty close to early blues in lyric and open-strum structure, with none of the self-conscious posturing of most white “bluesmen”. “You Think You Know How to Score” is harmonica-holder Dylan with the Holy Modal Rounders shootin’ speed in his butt: scary but hard not to watch and chuckle as head collides with concrete. “Nancy Sings” introduces the first of Jandek’s usually anonymous female vocal collaborators — and it’s a fragile, beautiful thing. Back to electric for “No Break”, with nancy on vocals, and a drummer (Nancy?) rattling about. This fragmented non-song could be a mellow-mood Harry Pussy jam from a decade later... This ’un’s a classic Jandek album — highly recommended.”
• Daniel Marks, web review (full review). “This my favorite album of Jandek’s early period, combining just the right sense of depression, mysteriousness, and spirituality that makes Jandek’s work in this time so intriguing... His guitar tuning has changed since Ready but it still comes nowhere near standard, or even any of the typical aberrant tunings, like E or D... The second track, ‘European Jewel’, sends a blast of electric into your ears... Jandek and his band stumble through a screaming version of the familiar ‘European Jewel’ riff before he sings the last part of the song, starting with the verse he never completed... [then] the band goes out in full improv mode for another three minutes... Bassist John even has a solo, walking up the fretboard in almost perfect time... Jandek brings us his most beautiful song on track six, appropriately titled ‘Nancy Sings’. While he plucks slowly one note at a time on guitar, angel-voiced Nancy sings poetic lyrics about nature... Evidently from track nine, ‘Blue Blister’, Jandek is a smoker, which explain why his voice gets so much heavier as time goes on (check out one of the spoken word albums to see what I mean). On track eleven, ‘Love, Love’, agent Smith shares with us some wisdom he’s gained from his travel... I swear my minister gave the same sermon once.”
• Aaron Goldberg, web review for Perfect Sound Forever. “The album kicks off with another classic haunted track... in which you can hear some weird almost freeform electronic tape hiss (?!) and Jandek's foot stomp, that also seems to have been accidentally fractalized into something greater than its parts by shitty technology. Then everything fucking EXPLODES and IMPLODES in Dylan-Live-1966-bootleg-proportions on ‘European Jewel’, featuring the funniest Rick Danko-meets-Mingus bass impersonation ever put onto tape! Jandek's guitar playing is getting choppier and more manic on this record until the freak-folk classic ‘Nancy Sings’ comes out of fucking nowhere for no reason causing time to momentarily stop — amazing what a woman's touch can do! The rest of the album noodles around aimlessly for a bit, but is no less ‘exploratory’, with some nice, frustrated steel-string buzz/drone on trax like ‘Blue Blister’ (speaks for itself really). It's interesting to note that despite the record being the most 'fractured' of his albums so far, Jandek's tapping foot is heard on nearly all tracks, proving there is some method to the meshigarse!”

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Jandek - " Later On " (corwood 0741) 1981

LATER ON

Side 1: Your Condition (5:16) / What Did I Hear (4:37) / Just Whisper (3:46) / Oh Jenny (3:40) / Until Then (2:20); Side 2: So Fly, Max (2:51) / The Janitor (3:31) / Don’t Know If I Care (2:30) / John Came (1:11) / Jessica (2:29) / Jackson’s Gone Down the Mississippi (2:37) / The Second End (3:17)

Lyrics

Review excerpts

• Billy Kiely, Forced Exposure web site (http://www.forcedexposure.com/), 2000. “This record, like Jandek’s first (Ready for the House), is comprised of not just basically one chord throughout, but as far as I can tell he barely even touches the fret board of his guitar, using his instrument more for atmosphere and percussion than anything like a ‘song’. The usual lyrical motifs of the blues are all over the place, including women, roads, death, and even janitors, which in my tweaked view of the universe hearkens back to Howlin’ Wolf’s paean to a custodian on his last record ca. 1972 (‘Watergate Blues’), and much like the Loren Mazzacane Connors Unaccompanied Acoustic Guitar Improvisations Vols 1–9 1979–1980 box set reissue on Ecstatic Yod, this is proof that something that might be called the blues can be non-formulaic, just undiluted expression, and actually just a skeleton on which to drape a very whacked universe of your very own.”
• John Foster, Op issue N. “Personal songs... by... a hopeless amateur whose limited, rather unique guitar-playing tends to meld with his whispery vocals, taking on a trancelike ambience. For sheer tunelessness only Kenneth Higney’s Attic Demonstration comes to mind... you really have to force yourself to concentrate on it.”
• Eddie Flowers. Quoted at The History of Rock Music, Vol. 4 (website). “Some highlights: “Your Condition” is like Roky Erickson trying to remember a dylan song during a rest-hospital breakdown; the accusatory “What Did I Hear” blues with its shattered lyrics (“I guess there’s no such thing as today/ or any day”); rockin’ on “Just Whisper” like a detuned Lou Reed playing “I’m Waiting For the Man” in his sleep; the finger-pluckin’ “Until Then,” rough personal emotional, ripped straight from the heart of pre-WWII country blues; Jandek feeling out the lyrics in a jazz-like way on “So Fly, Max”; pleading for understanding from a doubtful God on “Don’t Know If I Care” and finding a surprisingly pleasant drone for a moment (but only a moment).”
• uncredited, Aquarius Records catalog (website), 2002?. “Later On is his second [sic] album of lithium-soaked folk; a pseudo-jangle on the guitar barely carrying a tune and daydreaming poetry crooned with a creepier voice-crack than Will Oldham could ever conjur. The mysteries of Jandek, personal and musical, may never be fully revealed, but his peculiar genius is highly recommended none the less.”
• Aaron Goldberg, web review for Perfect Sound Forever. “Jandek start to experiment with his ‘sound’... The album finds Jandek shifting moods in bi-polar frequency, and also finds him starting to attack the guitar rather than play. You can actually hear some of the tracks start to fall apart, offering some sweet respite with the beautiful ‘Jessica’ and ‘Jackson’s Gone Down the Mississippi’, only to fuck it all up with closer ‘The Second End’ that features the plunky, grating sound that will become more prevalent later in Jandek’s ‘career.’”

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Jandek - " Six and Six " (Corwood 0740) 1981

SIX AND SIX

Songs

Side 1: Feathered Drums (3:27) / Point Judith (4:32) / I Knew You Would Leave (10:06) / Can I See Your Clock (2:29); Side 2: Wild Strawberries (6:00) / Forgive Me (3:58) / Hilltop Serenade (Part 1, 3:50; Part 2, 1:23) / You’re the Best One (2:52) / Delinquent Words (3:43)

Lyrics

Three year gap between the first two LP’s — Jandek’s lost years.Musically, this is the most catatonic and monochromatic Jandek LP, the most sullen and withdrawn. The songs drift past one by one like ships in the fog, propelled by an acoustic guitarist working slow, steady variations on the same handful of cracked notes. Even more than the first LP, this is the distilled essence of Jandek, the baseline from which the rest of his music develops. Though the songs here are only minimally differentiated musically, the lyrics are uncommonly vivid, poetic, and far-ranging. “Oh universe!” Jandek sings “on a journey to the stars”, but his spaceship’s full of all kinds of junk from Earth: spiders, a phonograph, some mica, a clown suit, the Tree of Knowledge. Several songs are sea-themed. On many later albums Jandek will be floating down a river; these are his thoughts once he’s reached the ocean. It’s low tide.

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Jandek - " Ready for the House " (Corwood 0739) 1978

Well!!!.....it's December, what music sounds like december?.....anything by Jandek i hear you scream.

Very well, it is time for the king of American DIY, with USA's equivelent of Fuck Off Records,- Corwood Industries. Home of the best cover art in 'rock' history, and the living proof that if you stick at something for ever, you will get a worldwide profile for it,and....gulp.....fans?! Plodding on regardless of opinion and taste never stopped U2, and it hasn't stopped the semi-mythical Jandek. The difference between Jandek and U2 is that Jandek is good, and U2 are the biggest pile of overbearing pompous ego-filth ever to squeeze out of the buttocks of rock!
I will attempt to post the almost complete Jandek catalogue in this festive month, to try and balance the hideous forced merriment that christmas forces down our collective throat. What would anyone you know not want for xmas MOST?........yes , a Jandek cd. Guaranteed to clear a room of people in less than 5 minutes.
First up is the debut album from 1978, including my favourite jandek track..."they told me i was a fool".

READY FOR THE HOUSE

(LP, 1978)

Songs

Side 1: Naked in the Afternoon (4:43) / First You Think Your Fortune’s Lovely (8:04) / What Can I Say What Can I Sing (4:44) / Show Me the Way, O Lord (4:10); Side 2: Know Thy Self (2:31) / They Told Me About You (4:26) / Cave In On You (4:18) / They Told Me I Was a Fool (5:04) / European Jewel (incomplete) (4:43)

Lyrics

If anyone knows of a numerological justification for starting the Corwood catalog numbers with 0739, please let me know. Note that the date is a full three years before his second LP. In the Trubee interview, Jandek says that 1000 copies of the LP were pressed. “European Jewel” is the first of Jandek’s five recorded versions of the same song. The version here is played on electric guitar (the rest of the album is acoustic). “You think you’re cool/ A European jewel...”

Review excerpts

• uncredited, Forced Exposure web site (http://www.forcedexposure.com/), 1999. “There were plenty of significant events in 1978, (“You’re The One That I Want” by John Travolta & Olivia Newton John was quite a popular track, for example), and one of the most low-key yet significant events was the debut LP release on the Corwood Industries label out of Houston, TX. Mysteriously enough it came out under the name “The Units”, but it was obviously a singular vision and not a band. That individual would come to be more commonly known as Jandek, and a total of 28 albums have been issued on Corwood to date. In 1978 however, there was no telling what was to come. Ready For The House was a mostly acoustic guitar/vocal record, of ethereal, shambling post-blues form. It set the stage for one the most individualistic and fascinating bodies of work in contemporary music. The original LP was casually issued in a beautiful color sleeve, featuring a mundane but striking image of a living room chair & table (replicated with almost pop-art brilliance on this CD). No other information was ever offered. As it remains today. Ready For The House sounded like no other record, and it’s doubtful that more than a handful of copies were sold at the time (promotional copies sent to out radio stations and reviewers were more voluminous). A second Jandek album wouldn’t come out till 1981. By the mid-80s a wealth of documentation had occurred and the early Corwood albums became notoriously unavailable just as people were finally getting up the gumption to consider buying them. This record has been “in demand” for over a decade now and Corwood has finally caved in and reissued it proper. Find out what you’ve been missing for the last 21 years!”
• Phil Milstein, Op issue L. “Sterling Smith has created an album that is homemade in every way, and it is a joy to listen to... The Units are completely enveloped in their own musical world. It shows in Smith’s thin, strained voice, in his unusual guitar style, and in his oblique, personal lyrics. This enraptured quality is one of the strongest points of the album, and one The Units share with great primitives like 1/2 Japanese, The Shaggs, and the Legendary Stardust Cowboy. Here it servers as a deterrent as well as a benefit. Unlike the others mentioned, Smith’s LP just doesn’t communicate itself very effectively. We can hear the wistfulness, the lostness, the loneliness, the anger and the joy Smith fills his songs with, but we feel it in terms of sympathy, not empathy. We feel for him, not with him... The Units have come up with an original musical language. Because of this, the songs sound very similar to each other at first, but after a while they each begin to prove themselves as wholly autonomous compositions. The guitar-playing is slow, only faintly melodic, alternately rich and tinny (sometimes both at once); occasionally Smith will slam the strings in anger or in hurt or in something, and the playing is so engrossing that these abrasive moments are enough to knock the listener on her butt!... Another endearing characteristic of Ready for the House is its overwhelming amateurness. The rough-edged crudity of each touch seems almost deliberate, but it carries a sweet beauty that a more polished production would probably have softened... Another highlight is the cover itself. Jad Fairs calls it ‘one of the best covers I’ve ever seen, and I agree... it really is gorgeous... Any one of us could have made this record, and as Lester Bangs often argued, that’s half the point right there. Bring the means of production to ‘the people,’ and they will out-create the moneyfolks almost every time.”
• Eddie Flowers. Quoted at The History of Rock Music, Vol. 4 (website). “The stark, painfully exposed, untuned-acoustic blues/folk that once made for such a richly uncomfortable listening experience now sounds focused and brilliant. it’s not that the music is any less dark, or the technique any more refined than it was 22 years ago; it’s just that the world has moved closer to Jandek’s reality. The anxious beauty of isolation and doubt.”
• Brogden, Garry. Vinyl Absolution #20 (October 2002) (website). “I like to play Ready For The House just as the light is fading on the day: as it creepily gets darker, Jandek is the perfect accompaniment for making you feel that, yep, life really isn’t worth living. It’s not necessarily what he says, it’s the way he says it... The tension is palpable, like there’s a vampire in the room and you just know that you’re on the menu... But, there’s something strangely life affirming about the whole thing. That someone like this, with the ability to track down those dark corners of the brain can somehow get his art (or artifice) out there.”
• uncredited, Aquarius Records catalog (website), 2002?. “The final song on the album... sounds a bit like a lost Velvet Underground demo, exhibiting a rare outside influence on his isolated world.”
• Daniel Marks, web review (full review). “Total isolation... is one of the themes of Ready for the House... particularly in the second track, ‘First You Think Your Fortune’s Lovely’. The song is about someone who does not wish be a part of the world, either because he feels he cannot, or because the world isn’t letting him... The vocals are sung and spoken. Some songs almost have a vocal melody, particularly the first two and the last tracks, but he never approaches a real ‘song’ in any definition we’re familiar with. Oddly, he always makes sure it rhymes, in a rare show of artistic effort... The single string plucking is used in a very creepy way on ‘They Told Me About You’. Jandek tunes his guitar and one chord not in a musical way, but more as an ambience. The sound of the one chord fits the feelings of sadness and isolation expressed in the lyrics... Jandek uses [the guitar] as a second voice, groaning its one, mournful ‘word’ over and over. One rule though: never touch the fretboard... One of the best of the typically boring Early Period.”
• Aaron Goldberg, web review for Perfect Sound Forever. “If you can hack this track [‘Naked in the Afternoon’] with no problem, you can pretty much well handle 90% of the man's voluminous catalogue. The sonic trademarks are there: the detuned at times death rattle acoustic guitar, the reverby haunted whiny voice, the banal, abstracted and often poetic lyrics... pretty much a homebrewed white boy-blues album, taking its chops (either purposefully or accidentally) from the Delta Blues via suburban Houston. In fact it's Jandek's inability to play the blues well that makes it so fucking 'authentically' Blues-like, in a sort of John Lee Hooker droney sort of way. Album closer ‘European Jewel’ has Jandek plug in an electric guitar and prove outright that he can play that lazy-hazy Lou Reed style as good as the best of ’em...”

Other commentary

• Irwin Chusid, WHRB interview, 2003. “I was given a copy of Ready for the House in 1978, I think... I was really stunned by it... I was stunned at the sheer amusicality or unmusicality or nonmusicality, the sheer emptiness of it. This was an album that started nowhere, went nowhere, and ended up nowhere... It was really like hearing a posthumous recording, a recording that was made after they had died... I had never heard anything that was so naked.”

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