The End of It All

Infobox Album
Name = The End of It All
Type = Album
Artist = Jandek


Released = 2004
Recorded = Unknown
Genre = Outsider music
Length = 40:07
Label = Corwood Industries
Producer = Corwood Industries
Reviews =
Last album = "Shadow of Leaves"
(2004)
This album = "The End of It All"
(2004)
Next album = "The Door Behind"
(2004)

"The End of It All" is the 37th release by avant-folk/blues singer/songwriter Jandek, released by his own Corwood Industries label (#0775). It was his second of four released in 2004. Jandek returns to electric guitar on the album, though his playing style and guitar tone sound like an electrified version of the acoustic playing on "The Humility of Pain" and "The Place". It began a series of more romantically focused albums.

Overview

"The End of it All" holds several milestones, some of which do not concern its musical content . For one, the title of the album set off the most intense speculation yet that this was the last album, a concern that caused enough attention to get Pitchforkmedia to run a news feature on "the last Jandek album." Corwood Industries DID respond though (in a letter to a fan), pointing out that the title was simply a lyric in a song. It was, though, the end of an era; within a month of its release Jandek would perform live for the first time at the Instal Festival in Glasgow, Scotland (for more info, see entry on Glasgow Sunday). So this is the last time Jandek is heard without officially being able to place the face with the man singing the music, to know the approximate age of the singer, or even the curious technique he uses to play the guitar.

But the album itself also represented change. For one, it was the debut of an open-tuned electric guitar, played so cleanly that many Jandek list members originally assumed it was acoustic. This album also was the start of a new sequence in album themes, focusing on a romance that goes through high and low points before finally coming to an end. On this album, despite the dissonance in the guitar tuning and vocals, things are happy. Happier, perhaps, than on any album prior.

"You took me by the hand/you led me to a private place," Jandek sings on the twenty-minute opener, "One of Those Moments." From there he sets about describing an intimate relationship: "I was so deeply buried/I needed your air/and now I feel so alive," he sings, recounting how the lover had forced a confession of attraction from him, after she had "told everybody" she liked him.

And the album stays in this frame of mind, with each track being played at about the same pace, with little variation between songs. Then again, the "songs" seem to exist only to frame the narrative, which is like an open letter addressed to this lover. We discover that wherever she is, "is a good place for me to be." The metaphysical level and regret of life that has formed the content of the previous five albums is gone, replaced by such lines as, "see if that soul you got wants to be with mine/then all the other differences don’t matter at all." It ends with an ode to how happy the narrator is, ending with the lines, "because I’m at the best place I ever knew/and it’s just after I met you." The vocals then allow the guitar an extended coda - the first real variation in playing on the album. Had this been the end, it would have ended it all on a high note. But this is just the beginning, it turns out. The albums from here, though overshadowed by the live performance, would chronicle the relationship to its inevitable end. Still, this is a new Jandek, the thoughts of a man fully involved with another person and not such an "invisible man" as before.

Track listing

#One Of Those Moments – 20:15
#I Hadn't Been There Before – 5:49
#They Don't Matter At All – 5:36
#I Met You – 8:12

Album Cover Description

This is s a contemporary photograph of the artist, most likely cropped or excerpted from a family snapshot.