Dusted Reviews
Artist: Jandek Album: Glasgow Sunday DVD Label: Corwood Review date: Aug. 27, 2006 |
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There’s a small comfort in viewing Glasgow Sunday, the long-awaited debut play-for-pay performance of the Corwood Industries mystery man. It’s small, like letting a silent fart into a movie theater seat cushion, but it’s there.
This DVD provides footage of a man playing guitar and moaning into a microphone, someone who looks strikingly similar to the figure on so many of Corwood's album covers. The names on the disc match up, too, reprising a previously-released CD of the same name with video footage - there's the aforementioned tall, mannequin-esque figure in a cowboy hat on guitar and vocals, Richard Youngs on bass, and Scatter’s Alex Neilson on drums. It all checks out. Surely, this must be Jandek.
Truthfully, Jandek's elusiveness has never really weighed up to the quality or quantity of the music released under the Corwood banner. I get it – you’re an outsider musician, and a fairly mopey one at that. Which is why the overall grit and impenetrable noise of his guitar on Glasgow Sunday wholly redeems this performance. The eight songs here are merely suggestions at the despondent lyrical compass, and the rhythm section plays them as such, in a very pedestrian jazz shuffle, or occasionally a bluesy backbeat. But the tone is like Steve Albini through a Fender Twin, the reverb tank blasting on full. This is some seriously harsh noise being kicked out; tonal, yet unbending, unchanging and very full, like having someone throw an industrial solvent in your eyes.
It’s the most remarkable thing about this disc, which may have two camera angles (and a workman-like mix of both), but really just two modes: Jandek, and off.
By Doug Mosurock
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Glasgow Sunday