[Jandek] Review of Jandek at the Empty Bottle, Chicago

[Lars Spurious]

Review of Jandek at the Empty Bottle, Chicago
Adventures in Modern Music

It started promisingly with a rare US appearance by Jandek, making his
Chicago debut. Bafflingly scheduled as the opening act on the first night,
he unsurprisingly drew the festival's largest crowd. Clad in black from head
to toe, he stabbed viciously at his guitar, peering gimlet-eyed from under
the brim of a natty William S Burroughs snap-brim fedora. He sardonically
delaimed lyrics of loss, desolation and emptiness, his jaw jutted
precipitously at the mic, his gaunt, skeletal frame twisting archly.
Willfully strafing his pick-up band (Josn Adams on bass and John McEntire on
drums, sounding uncannily like Jandek's UK outfit, Richard Youngs and Alex
Neilson) with harmonically dead chords and bitterly atonal riffs, Jandek
stubbornly frustrated their attempts to give the songs rhythm and shape, as
though both he and the songs were resentful of being dragged into public
view.

Nick Cain and Edwin Pouncey
Wire 274 December 2006
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mylist.net/archives/jandek/attachments/20071201/7acbebf4/attachment.htm