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Index discographique
    0759
0761
Tracks:
Walking (3'06"), You’re Not Even Alive (3'35"), Native Land (3'53"), Rooftop Sunset (2'18"), Bedside (2'48"), Solid Stone (2'41"), Out in the Rain (3:12), The Gone Wait (3'23"), Could Be Anyone (2'56"), Twelfth Apostle (4'25"), White Knob (3'17"), Whiskers (2'13"), Four by Four (2'50")
La tradition évangélique est très ferme sur le nombre d’apôtres nommés expressément par Jésus : ils sont douze - et le douzième, quel que soit l’ordre donné aux autres, est Judas Iscarioth, puis Judas le traître. Les références bibliques, dans l’œuvre de Jandek, sans être fréquentes, sont néanmoins présentes - soit sous forme de traces, soit sous forme de prières très intimes, très poignantes. Dans tous les cas, la prêche y est totalement absente - ce qui est plutôt réconfortant.
Le ‘Douzième apôtre’ est à la fois le dernier album publié en vinyle, et le premier d’une longue série d’albums solitaires, après une décennie chaotique close par le déferlement bruitiste de ‘The electric end’ (in ‘Lost cause’ - une sorte d’adieu à la Fée Electricité).
Finies, donc, les collaborations tapageuses : place à la méditation, tout du moins à une introspection plus tranquille. Le chant se fait ici - même par le moyen d’une étrange répétition des motifs - plus lisible : si la ligne mélodique reste soigneusement évitée, elle n’en demeure pas moins présente, comme en creux, simplement suggérée. La guitare s’est faite cristalline, et le jeu montre toute l’étendue des possibilités de la dissonance minimaliste, conférant à l’album une magnifique atmosphère, presque matinale, bleutée (à l’image, d’ailleurs, de la pochette).
Pure coïncidence de calendrier, peut-être : le ‘Douzième apôtre’ a été publié quelques mois après ‘Good as I been to you’ et pratiquement en même temps que ‘Wold gone wrong’, deux albums d’un Bob Dylan revenant à l’œuvre solitaire : une guitare, une voix - deux albums en tout cas largement sous-estimés. Trop minimaux, sans doute.
Si j’évoque Dylan ici, c’est la faute à Jandek : il le cite lui-même dans ‘Native land’ - ‘It’s not my fault, i live in a vault’, qui fait écho, mot pour mot, à un passage du fameux ‘It’s alright, ma (i’m only bleeding)’. Curieusement, ce clin d’œil est aussitôt ponctué à la guitare par les premières notes de ‘Volare’ - ce vieux standard de la musique populaire italienne (!). Et puis sa façon étirée de chanter ‘The native land is revolution’ n’est pas sans évoquer le Dylan de l’époque Blonde on Blonde (‘revoloooouuuuuuccccchhhhoooonne’).
Après tout, ce même Bob Dylan ne s’est-il pas fait traiter de Judas, lors du fabuleux et dramatique concert dit de ‘Manchester’, en 1966 ? Et tout çà, parce qu’il avait osé fricoter avec la Fée Electricité,,,
‘Twelfth apostle’ : après sa saison en enfer et ses ‘basements tapes’, le ‘New morning’ de Jandek ? Un sérieux signe d’ouverture, en tout cas : la session d’enregistrement semble s’être déroulée dans un lieu non hermétiquement clos, comme en témoignent les quelques bruits de passage de véhicules au milieu de certains morceaux… (Phasme)

 

 

Walking
My my it’s your ironside
Mmmmmm that’s you
Oh oh you’ve got a lot to give
Yes yes you’re true
Well, don’t need a horse to hold me
Don’t need no automobile
When you are what you are
Then there ain’t no dream they could steal (that could)
I’m walking up to you
You’ve got me holding your hand
I’m not a foreigner no no no
I’m just a man you made (memory)
Carpenters are all around
Making shoes to walk the ground

Rooftop Sunset
Well I guess it’s time
Well I guess it’s time
Put it down again mmmmm
I guess it’s time
Kept awake (away?) for a while
Hide behind a smile
Travel many miles
I guess it’s time
By the floating bird
Hey bird have you heard
That the sun is low in the country I go
I guess it’s time
Well I guess it’s time

Bedside
Going off the deep end
Oh honey won’t you be my friend
Liberty’s a friend of mine
Beats me to it all the time
Yeah all
Going off at the deep end
See the mercury with you go in
Missed the days of miracle (mister)
Hanging from a windowsill
You better believe yourself
Crying in the Everglades
Red yellow orange green
Chump won’t you go before you’re seen
What did you give
What do you need

Out in the Rain
Landed in jail, couldn’t pay my bail
Yes sirree, I guess I’m free
On a blacktop roof with a pine cone
Virtuosity, that’s jealousy
If I can be free, you won’t see me
In a million years with a bag of tears
Liver in my cup
Sliver in my veins
And a flowerpot out in the rain
Kind of mean
Just fourteen
And a high brochure, you can be sure
Of a foreign land out in the sand
Down by the way of a sunshine ray
Yes you can live but you can’t tell
The fortune of our blinding love
It’s in the skies you know
Where you must go

Twelfth Apostle
They say ???
???
They say you died before
And you’re living now
Well I would like to know you
If I can be your friend
They say its not easy to talk to you
I think I’ll try
Please don’t pass me by
Come and see me
You’re welcome here
I would like to know you
Can I go your way
They say you’re the one to rely on all the days
They say you died before
And you’re smiling now
Well I would like to know you
If I can, I’ll be your friend
They say it’s not easy to be with you for very long
But please don’t pass me by
I think I’d like to try
Oh must I go down
Where are you going
Come back again

Whiskers
Whiskers, whiskers, whiskers, whiskers
I see whiskers on your face
The way you look is a disgrace
I guess nothing could take the place of your whiskers, your whiskers
Ha ha, have to laugh you see
’Cause this is where I’d like to be
This and that would seem quite strange
And you couldn’t even want to die
If the problem was like that
You can say that to the cutter
Oh no no I think you better
You see we were thinking of leaving too

 


 

You’re Not Even Alive
Draw me a wise thin as blood
And I watch it dance on a ballroom floor
Send me peaches from afternoon
I know horses that lie to be damned
Baby I’m blessed with a putty knife
Trying to find a window in the painted sand, oh
It’s mu duty to find you happy today
Just as I’m tearing your life away
Caught around an avalanche
Look at the snow discolored blanch
I tried to lift you underneath an elm tree
But you wanted to go back
Painting all your treasures black

Native Land
When it comes and you get the very shudder
And maybe you were not so much being like the other
So get in line you’re losing time
Don’t burn golden eagles just to feel sublime
It’s like a liquor store I don’t live here anymore
Just flying a kite that’s out of sight
Except you see I’m innocent
It’s not my fault I live in a vault
I lost my glasses and it’s time to run
Into summer setting sun
The native land is revolution
It’s got my Mississippi attention
When you’re all white are you all black
I’m all green and she’s all purple

Solid Stone
Looking at the map again
Hey boy
Looking at the map again
Where am I now, let’s see
Hey boy
It’s not where I want to be
On the inside now it’s all drawn
Hey boy
Maladjusted infantry
Hey boy, hey hey boy
Where you want to be
San Francisco
Did it once, did it twice
Hey boy, I’m back in town
Laughing like a jolly clown
Hey boy
It’s solid stone

The Gone Wait
Now I got time to wait awhile
Before I walk that faithful mile
And so I sit beside a window
So I can see which way the winds blow
It’s a promised land you hold in your hand
It’s a fine line that you do see
And the certain friend who set you free
There’s talk of leaving that I hear
In the wind so very clear
It’s gone you know where you must go
Hey can’t you find a better way
Let your fortune find you gone away
Become today there’s no better way

Could Be Anyone
You took out my eye
And I wonder why
Are you the same birth
You’re not me
I can’t see the sun
Moving July, the babies on the floor
I’m not saying anymore
For you to hear now
??? house
The way to get around you
Now that I have found you
The sight of you everywhere
Just like some monster in the air
In the house that has no locks
Locks her baby in her box

White Knob
Well I can see that drawer sitting over there
Moving the same kind of ???
And I see magic in your hair
Your sides are so clear
I look at the buildings and I hear
You on my mind in no particular time of year
Light flowing down breaking in the day
For you to find me in just one of the ways
To make it look like ???
Don’t you know that the sun shines alone
Didn’t you that I’d be moving along
Oh blessed trees why did you come
Filling times and bothering none
Oh creaming gas you bled the day

Four by Four
Just drifting down
A morning town
With stacks (slats?) of wood
And chicken wire
Took poaching egg
A wedding cake
Passed by the way
I heard it say
That you were mine
And I was yours
In that way
We’ll feel okay
Then come with me
And come and see, we’ll go
Another town come
Dripping down
And I’ll get you
A house so blue
You’ll wish you were
With me some place
Way far away again
Into the mountains and valleys
Of the night
???
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
You won’t go buying maple wood
???
You tell me that you are free
Well let’s see
What the season