Jandek - Atlanta Saturday

It is always an occasion when Houston's mysterious, bearded bard releases a new album. There's never any notice and absolutely no promotion. I only find out when my inbox is filled with a deluge of chain emails from the Jandek mailing list about first impressions and song meanings. People have a tendency to hit "reply all" in the fan club so it is literally impossible to ignore the emails when something like that occurs in the world of Jandek. 

Atlanta Saturday was recorded in Georgia in 2007 and is a surprisingly serene and harmonic addition to the Jandek discography. Instead of playing his electric guitar, as is customary, Sterling sits down at the piano. The representative is accompanied by bells, strings, and what sounds like an oboe. Much of the performance is a quiet but lively modern classical style, pregnant with such pomp and gravitas that even its seeming joviality is loaded with precarious emotion: a sound that brings Philip Glass to mind. Sterling and his vocals seem more invested in the performance than usual. What typically sounds aloof and neurotic about his voice instead this time sounds vulnerable, sincere, and ready to share some unnamed grief or burden. 

He plunks steadily and rather harmoiously on the piano until "Part 6" which devolves into a chaotic whirlwind of simultaneous, seemingly unrelated melodies coming from each instrument and ramming forcefully into each other. But somehow there is still a sense of sharing and collaboration. Around minute 8 of this longest and most interesting track, Sterling comes unhinged again and descends into the old, familiar, depression and turmoil, "I just got so tired of it all. I'd rather stare at the bland oasis, the barren track of silence ambles the pictures passing by." Final tracks, 7 and 8, leave the listener with more beautiful, safe, classical improvisation and Sterling crooning once again in a more subdued manner.

It's a great treat for die-hard fans like me and wouldn't be a horrific place for Jandek newbies to get their feet wet. Getting ones' self used to the subtleties and strange beauty of Jandek is like boiling a frog alive: it must be done gradually or the subject will inevitably jump out and away.