Six and Six

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Six and Six

Studio album by Jandek
Released	1981
Recorded	Unknown
Genre	Folk Music/Outsider Music
Length	44:26
Label	Corwood Industries
Producer(s)	Jandek
All Music Guide link Op Magazine, issue M (favorable) link Forced Exposure link
Jandek chronology
Ready for the House (1978)	Six and Six (1981)	Later On (1981)

Six and Six is the name of the second album by reclusive Houston musician Jandek, though it was the first to be released under that moniker (the previous, Ready for the House, was credited to "the Units" on its first pressing). It was released by Corwood Industries (#0740). There have been two CD reissues so far, each adding more silence between the tracks.

1 Overview
2 Track listing
3 Trivia
4 External link

[edit] Overview

Released in 1981, the album was a full three years removed from the first one, and was filled with slow tunes that largely reflected on a life filled with regrets and regretting what might lie ahead, finding solace only in a far-away Creator and a love that never seems to materialize.

The music can only be described as stark and harrowing, as Jandek reigns in his tempos and flattens out the sound of his blues, keeping the dissonant ballad-like structures at a languid pace. But this is of a piece with everything about the album- from the black and white photo of the tough-looking, troubled youth on the front cover (our first image of the man behind Corwood Industries) to track titles like "I Knew You Would Leave" and "Delinquent Words."

A good way to describe Six and Six would be as a forty-five minute dark confessional. On each song, the artist's fingers strum the oddly-tuned strings while he moans lyrics like "I've been in jail before/been let out, too" and "You know evil, know it well...my hand it burns/scarred with these prints/ they will live when I die, that is a fact/the blood will drain/infection will mix with the blue corpse." To drive the nail home to the coffin, the album's second side is drenched in echo, and the listener's initial reaction may be one of hopelessness.

But with time the less oblique layers begin to rise. For one, there's a lot of positive introspection, and the second song on the album, "Point Judith," is noted by followers as being particularly revealing. Pondering the beauty of an abandoned resort town, the song metaphors a once-good relationship now gone. Either she can come back or the singer can find God, the song suggests. In other words, only through these things can come redemption. The album ends noting that all things eventually lose color, then "dust enters into all being/and man who came from dust, from dust he shall return." It's certainly despondent, but if one reflects on the changes of the subsequent albums it feels like a purging, as if Jandek were getting the hard stuff out so as to move forward, which he did at a rapid pace.