Chair Beside a Window

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Chair Beside A Window
Chair Beside A Window cover
Studio album by Jandek
Released 1982
Recorded Unknown
Genre Blues / Folk Music / Outsider Music
Length 43:24
Label Corwood Industries
Producer Corwood Industries
Professional reviews
Jandek chronology
Later On
(1981)		 Chair Beside a Window
(1982)		 Living in a Moon So Blue
(1982)

Chair Beside a Window is the fourth album by avant-folk/blues singer/songwriter Jandek, and Corwood Industries' first release of 1982 (#742).

Contents

[edit] Overview

Coming off the simple progressions of Later On, this record marked a leap forward for the artist in many ways. First and foremost is the debut appearance of female vocals on a Jandek record, on the song appropriately titled "Nancy Sings." Over surprisingly sensuous lyrics ("a dozen drops fall from your face/shaking the rain in a quiet place"), a lovely female voice sings over slowly picked, uniquely tuned strings. That ends the original first side, and the second begins with another female vocal by a woman described in a letter to Irwin Chusid as "Nancy's sister Pat." This song is a toss-off, but everyone's having a good time. Nancy, the letter tells Chusid, plays an "unaggressive drum stint."

That same adjective can't apply to whomever is playing drums on the album's second track, "European Jewel." A Velvets-style throwdown, the song actually picks up lyrically where Ready for the House's "European Jewel (incomplete)" left off four years prior (guess he wanted to finish the song). But the instrumentation is entirely different, and foreshadowed the crazed band sessions that would be released in earnest starting four albums later.

Meanwhile, the rest of the album picked up where Later On left off. "You can't deny there are spirits in this house," opening track "Down in a Mirror" begins, and you don't doubt it. The song is spooky, and made more so by what appears to be a metronome (or an old clock) ticking in the distance. There's certainly the spirit of the blues on the remaining tracks, and it's a restless one. "All I am is a fool and I/Ain't gonna fool no more" he belts out on "Unconditional Authority." Songs like "Poor Boy" and Blue Blister" follow in similar suite, with scant lyrics giving the vocalist room to work up a sweat around the increasingly unique guitar playing. Jandek's guitar playing may be his most original contribution to music: the notes are made by the tunings, not by what the fingers find on the fretboard. The percussive manner in which the guitar is often played allows the songs to be formed off the rhythms, and the combination of the tunings and the pattern of the rhythm form songs that sound more likely to be made from an Eastern stringed instrument than a Western six-stringed guitar. Another variation can be the occasional strumming of the guitar, which again accentuates the curious tunings and allows them to carry the song. Further, when the left hand does move around the fretboard it produces an effect closer to what a capo does; the tuning is either muted slightly or raised an octave. Rarely are actual chords struck, and their sparse use makes their occasional appearance striking.

This record also has a few "ballads," and "Love, Love" points in a spiritual direction, and suggests that the listener "make the most of your talents/Decide for yourself just what is God/And love love is the only way." Hardly the "dull, lingering pain" that Irwin Chusid describes as symbolizing all Jandek's music. In fact, the album ends on the hopeful, "The First End," which puzzlingly follows the previous album's "The Second End," ending with the lines "May a fragrant mist shine over you/until the sun rises in the dawn of a new day." This echoes the drops of rain in "Nancy Sings" as well as the tears in "Mostly All From You."

[edit] Track Listing:

  1. Down in a Mirror – 4:33
  2. European Jewel – 4:34
  3. Unconditional Authority – 3:49
  4. Poor Boy – 2:55
  5. You Think You Know How to Score – 2:30
  6. Nancy Sings – 2:55
  7. No Break – 3:16
  8. Mostly All From You – 3:03
  9. Blue Blister – 2:24
  10. The Times – 3:27
  11. Love, Love – 4:19
  12. The First End – 4:42

[edit] Album Cover Description

An extremely grainy "blown up" image. The figure depicted is almost certainly the same as from the other albums.

[edit] External links