A Kingdom He Likes

Infobox Album
Name = A Kingdom He Likes
Type = Album
Artist = Jandek


Released = 2004
Recorded = Unknown
Genre = Outsider music
Length = 36:45
Label = Corwood Industries
Producer = Corwood Industries
Reviews = *The Village Voice [http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0510,john,61827,22.html link]
Last album = "The Door Behind"
(2004)
This album = "A Kingdom He Likes"
(2004)
Next album = "When I Took That Train"
(2005)

"A Kingdom He Likes" is the 39th release by avant-folk/blues singer/songwriter Jandek, released by his own Corwood Industries label (#0777). It was his fourth release of 2004 and features the artist on acoustic guitar.

Overview

A dark album that deals with the frustrations of reality and, perhaps, mental health, "A Kingdom He Likes" continues a sequence that begins on "The End of It All". That album had described an unusually happy relationship (for this artist, anyway), and the follow-up, "The Door Behind", began with that happiness, but slowly fell prey to dark thoughts. This, possibly, causes a rift and that album ends with the artist presumably alone and pining for the love he has quite possibly run off. Here, everything turns black. Along with "Shadow of Leaves" this may be the most consistently morose of the "modern phase" Jandek, as he vents about the lost love ("skank, you skank," he says at one point) and the impersonal nature of the business world ("I just met the nicest of people/they only wanted to share business...rotten windy time"). He also admits that he "sometimes like to mix...things with my water," and suffers what appears to be a psychotic episode, where "little green spiders" attack the clothes in his closet ("the closet doesn't see them," we're told) before admitting that "I pay the spiders" but deciding that "they've got to go." This could, of course, be a bit of artistic diversion from the artist, but this song doesn't sound like the more "out there" lyrics from albums like "Modern Dances". However it is meant, this "delusion" sounds a bit too real.

The music echoes this dark phase, but then it sounds little different from the music on the other albums of this phase, save that his instrument of choice is the acoustic guitar, and he seems to have more range on it. Still, the songs creep along as Jandek searches for God ("There is no God, God is everything/it’s all a picture we’re painting on the street") and deals more with depression ("Something got inside of me and started hurting me/I just let it happen/it’s not too late"). In the end he seems angered at someone who perhaps wouldn't answer his call (the song is called "It Rang Eleven Times"). He says, "You can take your laughter/and scream at the night/I’ll never go with you," as the dissonant, sparsely picked guitar kicks up a bit. So we're left at the end with doubt, but these albums continued at a quick pace, and the next step seemed to head in a slightly more upbeat direction, at least coming to terms with things.

Track listing

#"I Gave My Eternity" – 10:58
#"Real Afternoons" – 5:32
#"A Windy Time" – 3:10
#"Your Own Little World" – 4:35
#"Sticks In The Marsh" – 4:32
#"No One Knows Your Name" – 3:38
#"It Rang Eleven Times" – 3:50