Living in a Moon so Blue is the fifth Jandek

Jandek

Jandek is the musical project of an anonymous outsider musician who operates out of Houston, Texas. Since 1978, Jandek has self-released over 60 albums of unusual, often emotionally dissolute folk and blues songs without ever granting more than the occasional interview or providing any biographical...

 album, and was issued as Corwood

Corwood Industries

Corwood Industries is a Houston, Texas-based company whose only output would appear to be the music of Jandek. It is not known what other ventures, if any, that Corwood Industries may be involved with....

 0743 in 1982. It was reissued on CD in 2001.

Overview

Living in a Moon so Blue is an album that's very hard to separate from its near-counterpart, Staring at the Cellophane

Staring at the Cellophane

Staring at the Cellophane is the sixth Jandek album, and his third of 1982. It was released as Corwood 0744. It was reissued on CD in 2001....

. Both albums feature the same parlor guitar on the cover (just from slightly different views) and the contents are remarkably similar, with Jandek delving further into the deep, anarchic blues while putting aside - for now - the female vocals and any instruments besides guitar, vocals and harmonica.

The albums are also distinguished by lean, blues-flavored songs with minimal lyrics, though these lyrics can run from brutal to humorously baffling ("Please don't push any buttons on this machine/On what machine?/Wet paint/Get out" form the entirety of "Bludgeon," for instance). The music itself runs from fast, rhythmic blues pounded out on the oddly-tuned strings to slow, picked ballads. The vocals are at times otherworldly, at times visceral, and at times barely there at all.

Track listing

1. "Gretchen" – 2:48
2. "One Step Ahead" – 2:12
3. "Suppression" – 2:10
4. "Strange Phenomenon" – 3:11
5. "You Can Stop Now" – 2:20
6. "Comedy" – 1:52
7. "Sailors" – 1:46
8. "Bludgeon" – 1:47
9. "All in an Apple Orchard" – 2:32
10. "She Fell Down" – 3:26
11. "Professional" – 2:26
12. "Anticipation" – 2:35
13. "Alexandria Knows" – 2:32
14. "Quite Nonchalant" – 2:15
15. "Relief of the Night" – 3:19
16. "Crime Pays" – 2:56

External links

• Seth Tisue's Living in a Moon so Blue review