White Box Requiem

Last updated
White Box Requiem
Jandek - White Box Requiem.jpg
Studio album by
Jandek
Released1996
Genre Outsider, folk
Length45:39
Label Corwood Industries
Producer Corwood Industries
Jandek chronology
Glad to Get Away
(1994)		White Box Requiem
(1996)		 I Woke Up
(1997)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svgStar empty.svg [1]

White Box Requiem is the 25th album by Jandek, and his only for 1996. Released as Corwood Industries #0763, it is essentially a "concept album" about death, loss, and a man who opens a mysterious white "Pandora's box". [2] There are 14 songs with acoustic guitar and vocals. [1]

Contents

After not releasing any music in 1995, Jandek returned with White Box Requiem the following year. [2] According to a rare interview with Jandek that appeared in The Wire , the album had originally been planned as a song-by-song response to Exile in Guyville by Liz Phair. [3]

Track listing

No.TitleLength
1."The Glade"1:23
2."White Box"3:48
3."Second Thoughts"1:40
4."Concrete Steps"3:43
5."Eternal Waltz"4:29
6."Thinking"1:41
7."Part Yesterday"3:02
8."Walking in the Meadow"7:45
9."Evening Sun"2:44
10."Must Have Been a Miracle"2:00
11."Wondering"2:44
12."What Should I Do"1:46
13."Approaching the City"4:27
14."Didn't Really Die"4:27
Total length:45:39

Reception

Writing for AllMusic, Skip Jansen calls the album a collection of "fractured songs...drenched in the atonal ambience that makes his contribution such a standout. For lo-fi wayward mavericks, it doesn't come more outside than this". [1]

Seth Tisue, a Jandek discographer, has characterized White Box Requiem as "almost catatonically mopey and meandering... He sounds hopeless." [4] In contrast to Blue Corpse (1987), which Tisue describes as "a record about emotional devastation with some perspective in it", in White Box Requiem, the emotion comes "from totally inside it". [4]

In a review of White Box Requiem for In Music We Trust , Gary Gold writes, "[Jandek's] songs remain as starkly beautiful as a David Lynch opening shot, and the accompaniment (imagine handing your most ornery nine-year-old nephew a $29 guitar before locking him for three days in a windowless basement) remains as brutally poignant as ever." [5]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 Jansen, Skip. "[Review] White Box Requiem". AllMusic . Retrieved April 27, 2023.
  2. 1 2 Salles, Andre (September 8, 2020). "#25. White Box Requiem (1996)". Tuesday morning 3 a.m. Retrieved April 27, 2023.
  3. ↑ Richardson, Mark (January 17, 2014). "Top 10 Revelations from The Wire's Interview With Jandek". Pitchfork . Retrieved April 27, 2023.
  4. 1 2 Wolk, Douglas (January 6, 2000). "Songs of a Lifetime". Chicago Reader . Retrieved April 27, 2023.
  5. ↑ Gold, Gary (June 2000). "[Review] Jandek – White Box Requiem (Corwood Industries)". In Music We Trust . Issue 31. Retrieved April 30, 2023.
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