Foreign Keys

Foreign Keys is the second album released in 1985 by musician Jandek, and his eleventh overall. It finds him returning to the band sound with a vengeance, and is the first all-band Jandek album, with no acoustic numbers whatsoever. It's also an album almost split down the middle between tracks sung by the main artist and those by his female counterpart, assumed to be "Nancy" (it is certainly the same vocalist from "Nancy Sings" on Chair Beside a Window).

[edit] Overview

The music itself is rowdy, raw and surprisingly loose art/garage punk whose focus changes somewhat depending on the vocalist. The tracks by the male vocalist (the first five and the eleventh) represent the wildest batch of songs on a Jandek album yet. Finding the middle ground between comedy and horror, opener "Spanish in Me" has a refrain that says "you broke my neck until three/until four/until five..." while tossing around more non-sequiturs that somehow always lead back to broken necks because "that's the Spanish in me." Okay. It just gets weirder from there, as the band (which includes a more audible bass - it is certainly a full band here, and not the artist overdubbing himself) amps up. In fact, it has to be said that Corwood's notorious comment (in a letter published by Irwin Chusid) that drummer "John" was "as absolute a drummer...as Ginger Baker" turns out to hold some truth. "John" slams the kit like he was Art Blakey on LSD, banging around at such intense volumes that it's amazing the set doesn't fall apart beneath him, or that anyone else can be heard. But the Corwood Rep just ups his vocals a notch to compete, and comes off like Nick Cave in The Birthday Party, screaming out across songs like "Caper" ("God is one big caper"), "Uncle Steve," and the especially crazed "Don't Be So Mean." Then there's an instrumental break and the second half comes on with Nancy's rich vocals.

No longer in "ballad mode," Nancy shows she can belt it out on "Needs No Sun" and "Some of Your Peace." But her wildest trick comes on "Oh No," where she repeats those two words with increasing variance, holding them, stretching them out and working around the cracked backing band.

The album's last two tracks are a slight change of pace - "Ballad of Robert" is a ballad of sorts (though an electric one), with the Corwood Rep back on vocals, talking about his friend Robert "from the halfway house." Then the album closes with the first duet with Nancy, a repeat of the opening track, this time renamed "River to Madrid." A surprising album to say the least (even in light of Interstellar Discussion), it set the template for what followed.