[Jandek] Criticism

[Davidson Roberts]

I think it lies in the vocals. His current voice is deep, creepy, end-of-his-rope moaning, whereas his younger self, while basically making the same inflections, was a lot easier to swallow, simply because of the higher timbre. Also, he doesn't seem to deviate at all from the drawn out moaning lines, whereas in the past he had a few different ways of delivering his lyrics (shouts, attempts at singing, etc.). I don't know if that really helped, but it's the best I can muster. 
 
-Dave

Dave Parent <dave9199 at lycos.com> wrote:
I feel the same way. I very recently sent a post about the same thing but only a couple people responded. I too would like to like 
these albums. I'm very slowly adjusting to them and excepting them for what they are. But the content of the most recent albums 
sounds awkward. If you look past that, the music is still what we've been used to, but it's the vocal delivery & some of the content 
about relationship(s) that's changed. It's difficult to write about, but yet, you hear it instantly. It's hard to make an argument: His 
recent albums sound the same; so did his first albums, what's the difference? And yet, having heard all of these albums, there 
clearly is a big difference, but how do you descibe it? There's my question back to you Dave.

The other Dave


----- Original Message -----
From: "Davidson Roberts" 
To: jandek at mylist.net
Subject: [Jandek] Criticism
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 01:18:45 -0700 (PDT)

> 
> I'm pretty bored with Jandek's newer material. Pretty much every album since 
> "I Threw You Away" has been the same, with the occasional switching of 
> instruments as the only real difference. It's easily his most boring phase 
> ever. At least the early records, though sounding nearly indentical, had 
> weird songs like "Comedy" or "She Fell Down" or the hauntingly beautiful 
> images of "Down in a Mirror", "Jessica" or "Nancy Sings", but these are just 
> full of the same old self-searching, I-suck-with-women blues cliches we've 
> heard over and over. At least when he used to do this, he'd provide us with 
> striking images and metaphors like those in "First You Think Your Fortune's 
> Lovely" or "Cave in on You". But now he just sounds like a old guy grumbling 
> to his son about taking paths and making choices and how he wasted his life. 
> I guess it's really me that's the problem; Jandek, probably in his 50's at 
> the time of these recordings, is far from the phase in his life that my youth 
> can relate
> to.
> Still, you'd think he'd at least have gained a view kernals of wisdom by 
> now. He seemed to have gotten to perspective on the spoken word albums when 
> he was telling us to "live the half life", but now he seems to have fallen 
> back into the old self-doubt and he's not writing about in any way that i 
> really find interesting. Of course, he never seems to make his music for 
> anyone but himself, so maybe i'm expecting too much. I'd love to have some 
> counter-arguments here, because I want to be able to get into these new 
> records.
> 
> -Dave
> 
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