White Box Requiem

White Box Requiem is the twenty-fifth album by Jandek, and his only for 1996.Released as Corwood Industries #0763, it is essentially a "concept album" (see the title) about a guy who opens a "Pandora's box" of sorts. Over a year removed from the last album, this was the longest period between Jandek albums since the original three year stretch between the first two albums.

1 Overview
2 Track listing
3 Album cover description
4 External links

[edit] Overview

White Box Requiem finds a new focus for Jandek, and the album is utterly unlike anything before it. The fourth consecutive solo acoustic album, this sounds worlds removed from the travel diaries and crazed diversions of Graven Image and Glad to Get Away. It is also exactly what it says: a "Requiem" (though without the hallelujah chorus) for a guy who receives a "white box" with a note saying "do not open under penalty of death." So he opens it, and he dies, and then he has second thoughts. And then?

Presumably the narrator is pondering his fate in the instrumental sections. Occasionally vocals arise to continue the story - "you made me come alive," he sings in "Must Have Been a Miracle," though we later discover that he "didn't really die," but then decided to kill himself all the same, so he can be closer, it seems, to the person with the "light" that saved him earlier. Is this more religious pondering or something else entirely? What the hell is in the white box? What does it all mean?

Only Jandek can say. This is by a long shot the most meditative music Corwood had produced to date, and features some of the finest guitar work. In fact, this seems to work out a compromise of sorts between the more straight-ahead music of, say, Blue Corpse and the unique tunings and picked strings of the early acoustic albums. The strings are still tuned to a non-standard scale, but it's closer to the warm sounds of Western notation, and rather than being rhythmically plucked the strings are strummed or picked in a slight blues-ish manner, never allowing a note to interrupt the feel of the music

And he does a lot with the picking, even moving his fingers some around the frets, getting a "sliding" effect that gives strength to the instrumentals (he also drenches the songs in echo, which gives the album a ghostly feel and makes each note resound into the next). They're all of a piece with each other, but keep in mind they're supposed to be - it's best to think of this as one song, and it has been suggested that the album may have been recorded in one take without pause. The reason given is the abrupt end to the tracks, which often pick up exactly where they left off in the next song. Whether that's true or not, it's safe to say that this is meant to be taken as a whole, and as a serious piece of music.

[edit] Track listing

The Glade – 1:23
White Box – 3:48
Second Thoughts – 1:40
Concrete Steps – 3:43
Eternal Waltz – 4:29
Thinking – 1:41
Part Yesterday – 3:02
Walking in the Meadow – 7:45
Evening Sun – 2:44
Must Have Been a Miracle – 2:00
Wondering – 2:44
What Should I Do – 1:46
Approaching the City – 4:27
Didn't Really Die – 4:27

[edit] Album cover description

After three covers of white houses the album with "white" in its title gives us another head shot of a young Corwood Rep, hair thick and grown out and sideburns grown out. He looks - judging by the tie - like he's at a wedding or a formal event.