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Angels of Light | Review | Everything is Good Here
Andrew Male
**** = (Splendid!The best of its kind)
Third studio album from Michael Giras post Swans collective.With 1986's Holy Money, Swans found their purpose. Following four years of visceral reports from lifes stinking gutter, allied to an oppressive, puonding, galley-slave soundtrack, Swans started incorporating elements of US gospel and country, edging towards some kind of ugly, elegiac soul music. The Swans project foundered with a move to Universal in 1989 but 10 years later, Gira returned to these cavernous shadows of american myth with Angels of Light.Everything is Good.... would appear to be the best effort yet, skeletal bluegrass ballads of dust,blood,teeth,death,and love,layered with febrile piano,brute hammerings,insect drones,childrens choirs, accordion, dulcimer,and hideous man-monkey wails from some fetid island of lost souls. Eerie,relentless,as beautifull as a rainbow in a crackpipe. Everything is good... showcases the kind of subterranean folk we might hear bleeding from stormdrains in the post-apocalyptic future.