The Gone Wait

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Professional reviews
The Gone Wait

Studio album by Jandek
Released	2003
Recorded	2003
Length	39:54
Label	Corwood Industries
Producer(s)	Jandek
All Music Guide (2/5) link
Jandek chronology
The Place (2003)	The Gone Wait (2003)	Shadow Of Leaves (2004)

The Gone Wait is the 35th album by Jandek, and the first of two released in 2003 It is Corwood Industries release #0773, and is the first release to feature the artist accompanying himself on fretless electric bass, rather than on his usual acoustic or electric guitar. The album's title was also the name of a song on Jandek's 1993 release Twelfth Apostle

1 Overview
2 Track listing
3 Album Cover Description
4 Reviews
5 External link

[edit] Overview

As The Place was a sequence of five songs, each using the definitive article ("the" picture, "the" place, etc) and featuring a cover that included mannequins in a storefront window, so does The Gone Wait mirror that with five tracks in the personal possessive ("I went to hell," "I found the right change," etc) and more mannequins from what may be the same foreign storefront window. The tracks are also linked thematically, continuing the "storyline" begun on I Threw You Away - that of an aging man regretting his life and offering Eastern philosophical advice to what is most likely a potential lover. But a few things have changed here, first and foremost being the instrumentation. Gone entirely is the guitar, replaced by an electric fretless bass, which is played simply but effectively. Don't listen for any Funkadelic influence, however.

Lyrically, this picks up again much where the prior album left off. The narrator has gone to hell, but, "then I went to heaven/can I catch you on your way to hell/take the life out of you." In fact, closer listen reveals what's sounding less like a mentor and more like an obsessive: "I got a chair and a carpet for you/but I don’t know where you live." He also laments that "I can't go with you when you die," and declares that "I was born into your loving arms." His repeat of the phrase "we use our bodies to describe how we feel" may be the closest to sexual closeness he's gotten up to this point.

From there, as the bass rolls and tumbles behind his low, cracked vocals, he laments that he can't go back to "the place" (presumably the one from the previous album). Last time he said he'd lost the key, but now admits that he "sees the open door" but worries that "there'll never be a going back" if he opens the door, apparently describing a fear of giving up the lonesome existence he laments of elsewhere. But of course, there's security in that existence, and you can live in the remembrance of good times past ("I was a king when I was twelve"). At the end, he tosses in a bit of humor ("hey diggety daggedy" begin the verses to the last song) but also comes to the revelation that maybe the best thing he can do is sit in his ornate front room and describe what goes on around him. That takes it back to the idea that he's talking to the listener ("I’m in this moment of giving" he says - foreshadowing the extensive release schedule that would start in 2004?) As for the "you" of the last four albums? "I’m sitting in the front room/deciding what stays and what goes/when it’s all gone/if you don’t give up all your rights/you just pass along/Abandon everything you wanted."