[Jandek] Corwood 0784: What Else Does the Time Mean

[Danen D. Jobe]

Found the familiar package in my mailbox today and boy is it something.  Hope this file isn't too big for anybody - HAD to get this image up for all to see. In case you can't open it or can't tell (it isn't, surprise, a professional photo)shows our young Corwood Representative sitting on what appears to be a bench with a wood-handled axe in his hand.  He looks to be in his early teens, perhaps? 

The music? Well, let's just say that this isn't an album for those who've been bitching about his recent albums, though I like his use of the phaser (am I right about this? I don't play guitar so I have to guess at the pedals) throughout - especially on the first song. In fact, I find that track to be rather meditative. Jandek focuses on hypnotic sounds with only occasional vocals.  But the lyrics are where the wild side of this one is, and coming quite soon after an album (Khartoum Variations) that was almost word for word the same as its predecessor, we now get a song ("The Place") that is DIFFERENT from the original. Only listened once (I'll try to get lyrics up later) but I caught something about "the overdone cabbage and the underdone cognac."
 
Images of murder abound, and the last track talks about firing someone.  

Curiously, this album appeals to me most as a sort of extended narrative.  Put next to many of the recent albums, it fits right in.  He's still on about love (though not as much)but he's more on about TIME (as the title suggest). How do people use it, waste it ("the Place" seems to be about wasting time in a bad restaurant)and define it? What is it and what are we, anyway? How do we even know who we are and how to define this?

He gets way wound up on "Walls Down" and "Walk Over" (which may be the best tracks on the disc), and I'm anxious to get a better feel for this lyrically. I get the feeling that someday the records that begin AFTER the acapella albums will be able to be put together and matched up. I'll say this, though - his lyrics are going to interesting places. If 'When I Took That Train' and some of the other albums seemed to ponder the same love imagery his newer work (and I'm including the concerts) is really raising the bar. 

Okay, enough for now.  I'm impressed with it though again many may choose to print out the lyric sheet and the cover and pass on the music, which largely stays in the same mid-zone as his other recent records. Yet this was the case with 'Ready for the House,' wasn't it?  Where even the slightest change caused reaction?

I don't know - I'll have a better idea when I get more time to listen tonight.  For now, here's the track list and the cover.  

Danen

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What Does the Time Mean
1. My Own Way - 16:34
2. Walk Over - 5:00
3. Japanese Cup - 7:24
4. Walls Down - 5:27
5. The Place - 6:36
6. I've Been a Body - 7:16
7. I'm Sorry No - 8:01
8. If I Waited Twenty Hours - 3:56
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