Jandek "The Other Side" from the Glasgow Sunday DVD

For those not familiar with the reclusive and mysterious figure known as Jandek, I recommend you start here to understand how quietly monumental this live performance, released in June on DVD, was for those present and his small legion of devotees. Since 1978, Jandek has released more than 40 albums of sparse, enigmatic and incredibly desolate music through his own Corwood label, but apart from some de-contextualized album cover photos, there has been nothing else to identify him (somewhere online after this show, one fan cropped an image of Jandek’s ear from an album cover photo and compared it to a digital picture taken at the concert in an attempt to prove that it was him, and not a stand-in). The fact that the music alone has been the sole insight into the man has assisted the emergence of a feverishly attentive cult, poring over lyrics and speculating as to the man (or men) behind the mystery (the whole story is best captured in the 2003 documentary Jandek on Corwood). Glasgow Sunday no doubt dispels a bit of the mystery, documenting Jandek’s first-ever concert performance in October 2004. It was captured by two cameras, and the not-surprisingly unadorned DVD offers the option to watch either camera in isolation, or a mix of the two. I chose the mix.

The film opens with Jandek walking out in silhouette and strapping on his guitar. The spotlight fades up, revealing a gaunt figure clad in a black shirt and trousers and a wide-brimmed hat, bordered on all sides by an arched brick façade. His physical appearance couldn’t more perfectly represent his myth—his skin struggled to cover the bones in his face, leaving jagged points where cheeks should be, and his eyes were as black as his guitar body. Jandek acknowledged his bassist and drummer (Richard Youngs and Alex Neilson, respectively) by looking in their general direction, and they started into “Not Even Water.” The complicated dissonance that came from them attempting to fit with one another was far from the lonesome seance I was expecting. The music banged off the bricks and sprayed sound everywhere, creating an atonal, rhythmless electric free-folk wash that was as mesmerizing as it was unexpected. His vocal delivery remained the same desperate moan as on record—on “Where I Stay” he admits (with a slight lisp), “I feel light as a feather since you’re gone/I don’t feel the floor that I’m walking on,” then “I stare at objects, but I don’t see them,” before rethinking things later: “As a matter of fact, I don’t walk much. As a matter of fact, I don’t talk much.”

These lyrics come out because they have to, because it can’t possibly stay inside any longer, and it all sounds like something of a cure to Jandek. It’s a thought pattern and form of public self-psychology that, if approached not as a rock concert but act of cathartic confession, can actually be quite horrifying. At times during the show, he tried to adorn his voice with a sort of presentable ornamentation—on “Darkness You Give,” he even approached something resembling a croon—perhaps a sideways attempt to give those listening some sort of reference point, or possibly to distance himself from the fact that it all hurts horribly to think of. Douglas Wolk describes his appeal best: "Compared to 'real' pop music, Jandek's songs are terrifyingly ugly; in the context of his decades of persistence, the range and mass of his work, they become intensely beautiful and meaningful. They are absolute, pure self-expression, an unfocused, unlit snapshot of his entire adult life." Set-ender “The Other Side” (mp3) is the closest thing to a regular song performed; he begins by scraping shards of sound from his guitar and is soon joined by Youngs and Nielsen. He directly addresses the listener: "I'm gonna tell you a story about a little girl. She broke my heart when I was five. I got so cold now....where's the other half of my heart? I just can't find it, the other side!" The word "side" is divided into two syllables, the second syllable wailed in a register known only to the desperate.

Buy the Glasgow Sunday DVD and browse his other CDs at Forced Exposure.