''White Box Requiem'' is the 25th album by

Jandek Jandek is the musical alias of Houston, Texas based lo-fi folk singer Sterling Smith. Since 1978, Jandek has independently released over 45 albums without granting interviews or providing any biographical information, releasing on a self-made lab ...

, and his only for the year 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", which some have speculated is a coffin. There are 14 songs with acoustic guitar, half of them with vocals. The instrumental pieces are sparse and experiment with echo, with "restless" passages that music critic Andre Salles has described as "consistently inventive atonal plonking that never sits still". After not releasing any music in 1995, Jandek returned with ''White Box Requiem'' the following year. According to a rare interview with Jandek that appeared in ''

The Wire ''The Wire'' is an American Crime film, crime drama Television show, television series created and primarily written by author and former police reporter David Simon. The series was broadcast by the cable network HBO in the United States. ''The ...

'', the album had originally been planned as a song-by-song response to ''

Exile in Guyville ''Exile in Guyville'' is the debut studio album by American singer-songwriter Liz Phair, released on June 22, 1993, by Matador Records. It was recorded at Idful Music Corporation in Chicago between 1992 and 1993 and produced by Phair and Brad Wood ...

'' by

Liz Phair Elizabeth Clark Phair (born April 17, 1967) is an American singer-songwriter. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Phair was raised primarily in the Chicago area. After graduating from Oberlin College in 1990, she attempted to start a musical career ...

Track listing

Reception

Writing for

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

, 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". Seth Tisue, a Jandek discographer, has characterized ''White Box Requiem'' as "almost catatonically mopey and meandering... He sounds hopeless." 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". In a review of ''White Box Requiem'' for ''

In Music We Trust ''In Music We Trust'' is a music webzine, publicity company, and record label based in Portland, Oregon. It was established as a webzine in July 1997 by Alex Steininger and his friend Ryan O'Neill. Its original goal was to help promote work by new ...

'', Gary Gold writes, " andek'ssongs remain as starkly beautiful as a

David Lynch David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American filmmaker, visual artist and actor. A recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 2019, Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, and the César Award for Be ...

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."

References

External links

Seth Tisue's ''White Box Requiem'' review
{{Authority control Jandek albums Corwood Industries albums 1996 albums