Search - Jandek :: Nine-Thirty

I just browse through death books.

Johnny Heering | Bethel, CT United States | 02/07/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This was the tenth album by the prolific Jandek. It sounds a lot like his previous nine albums. The songs consist of Jandek singing and playing acoustic guitar, except he doesn't sing on the instrumental "Tumblings" and he also plays harmonica on "You Didn't Lie". It's typical early acoustic Jandek. Most people will find this album to be unlistenable, but I kind of like it."

One of his best.

C. Robinson | Portland, Oregon | 05/31/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Nine-Thirty is probably my favorite Jandek record. His tenth, it came out amid his supremely chaotic "first electric period," seemingly the comedown record after the half-frenzied, half-downtrodden Interstellar Discussion (1984). Rather than another electric record, Nine-Thirty is a straight-up acoustic/vocal album; a return to the starkness of his earliest releases.



The album starts off with "Tell Me When" and we immediately notice two things: 1.) The acoustic guitar is in the same tuning that was used on the acoustic half of Interstellar Discussion. 2.) Jandek is strumming faster and with more aggression than usual. "Tell Me When" is a great opener and Jandek gives one of his absolute best vocal performances.



Next we come to a series of three much quieter songs. "Left The Beach Last Sunday" and "Bells And Voices" are all quiet brood, the former sporting lyrics concerning a trip from "South Carolina to Ohi-a" and the latter concerning folks who always either come or go: "that's what you do, you either come or go... that's what I do, I either come or go... come along... I left a long time ago and I guess you didn't notice." Then comes "Faye" which lyrically speaking is a fairly traditional blues number that functions as a sort of rewrite of Jimmy Reed's "Honest I Do" and is one of my favorite tracks on the album.



"Wrong Time" is up next and it's another aggressive one. Jandek pounds the strings and sings his confused lyrics with a hair-raising

amount of conviction: "What is God? What are you doing here? Or there? I am a fool, forgive me." Then comes "Voices In The Dark," in which our man complains of hearing the titular voices while quietly skittering aimlessly around the guitar strings. It is truly one of Jandek's spookiest songs.



"Green Dreams" is utter sorrow distilled into song form. The strings are plucked quietly and our man moans, in his gloomiest whimper, words like "the earth wakes up, but you're not here," the guitar and vocal delivery rising in intensity as the song draws to a close and brings us to side A's edgy closer, "Blind Cat."



Side B. starts off with "Georgia East," at track that brings us back to the subject first broached on "Left The Beach Last Sunday": travel. "Coming into Atlanta, big wheels turning," he moans, plucking the strings one at a time. Next up is "May 3," a song about Charleston, South Carolina. Then we get the title track, "Nine-Thirty," in which Jandek surprises everybody by touching the fretboard and creating a series of fractured chords over which he sings about driving. It is certainly the most upbeat track on the album.



The travelogue comes to a halt at "This Is A Death Dream." Our man sings and speaks his way through what seems to be a dream-narrative about searching for books at a cemetery. He attempts to get his friends to come along in his search, but they are afraid. The dream wraps up at a wine party at Jandek's house: "weird death monsters approached and I admitted them as they filed past into my house. Not the bedroom where others were; they danced in the living room... extremely macabre and death-like moves. Others saw them and sometime later expressed horror as they left or escaped." Totally creepy and surreal and one of my absolute favorite Jandek songs.



"You Didn't Lie" is the only track on the album that deviates from the pure acoustic guitar/vocal format. A harmonica squeals atop the one-string-at-a-time pluck and halts before Jandek begins singing: "you didn't lie, you only told the truth. I got some place that was very hard to get out of." Then we get more harmonica before the utterance of the final lines: "didn't get too close... wouldn't get too close."



The final track is a stripped-down-to-the-bare-bones reworking of "Oh Jenny," a song which originally appeared on Later On (1981) and originally featured harmonica and a much less depressing guitar tuning. Jandek sounds exhausted on this song and he strums the strings quietly and repeatedly moans, "oh Jenny, didn't mean to do you so bad... oh Jenny, I'll give you everything I have" until the track reaches it's abrupt end and the album is over.



Nine-Thirty is a great, underrated Jandek gem. In my opinion, it ranks up there with Six And Six (1981) and Ready For The House (1978) and all of his other classics. If you're a Jandek fan, give it a listen if you haven't already. You just may wind up liking it as much as I do.

"