PRESS
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The Body Lovers | Number One of Three | Review
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University of Torontounified and emotion-laden musicAnyone who has spent as long doing music like Michael Gira deserves respect. Unfortunately, there are few artists around who can match Gira’s fifteen-odd-year commitment to a singular vision. As the father and main member of the Swans since the early eighties, he perpetuated an instantly recognizable style throughout perpetual personnel and sonic changes. While the Swans’ fellow New Yorkers and initial touring mates Sonic Youth became lost in a poptastic daydream of commercial acceptance, Gira got down in the underground and created masterworks like The Great Annihilator and Soundtracks for the Blind. Now the Swans are gone, and Gira is solo. Gira may be solo, but on The Body Lovers he gets musical assistance from familiars like Jarboe, who was the Swans’ other vocalist and occasional songwriter and who adds some beautiful melismas to this mix, Kris Force, James Plotkin, Mike Vaino, and Bill Rieflin, who contributes some stunning piano pummelling. This mostly instrumental composition highlights Gira’s ability to create unified and emotion-laden music without words and without playing everything himself. This record forwards Gira’s career but is also forward looking. It sounds distinct from the Swans, while it continues Gira’s futuristic focus on......
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The Body Lovers | Number One of Three | Review
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Ink 19 | Drew Westintended to be played as one long nightmarePowerful. Emotional. Unnerving. These words are almost always used to describe SWANS, but let's not go there. Gira has taken off on the most disturbing soundscapes I've heard to date and the words above apply one hundred percent. It is intended to be played as one long nightmare, but thankfully ten locator points have been dropped in case your spine can't handle it. Best way I can imagine listen to The Body Lovers would be while reading The Consumer by Gira. I wonder if he didn't have this in mind while recording. It is the first of three installments and I've already made my phone calls to make sure I get the next two. If each rolls in around seventy-three minutes, two more will make for the best soundtrack to play at your house on Halloween. Don't buy candy to give to the kiddies. Their parents aren't letting them come to THAT house. Keep it coming Gira, you don't scare me!...
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The Body Lovers | Number One of Three | Review
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University of Torontounified and emotion-laden musicAnyone who has spent as long doing music like Michael Gira deserves respect. Unfortunately, there are few artists around who can match Gira’s fifteen-odd-year commitment to a singular vision. As the father and main member of the Swans since the early eighties, he perpetuated an instantly recognizable style throughout perpetual personnel and sonic changes. While the Swans’ fellow New Yorkers and initial touring mates Sonic Youth became lost in a poptastic daydream of commercial acceptance, Gira got down in the underground and created masterworks like The Great Annihilator and Soundtracks for the Blind. Now the Swans are gone, and Gira is solo. Gira may be solo, but on The Body Lovers he gets musical assistance from familiars like Jarboe, who was the Swans’ other vocalist and occasional songwriter and who adds some beautiful melismas to this mix, Kris Force, James Plotkin, Mike Vaino, and Bill Rieflin, who contributes some stunning piano pummelling. This mostly instrumental composition highlights Gira’s ability to create unified and emotion-laden music without words and without playing everything himself. This record forwards Gira’s career but is also forward looking. It sounds distinct from the Swans, while it continues Gira’s futuristic focus on......
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The Body Lovers | Number One of Three | Review
()
University of Torontounified and emotion-laden musicAnyone who has spent as long doing music like Michael Gira deserves respect. Unfortunately, there are few artists around who can match Gira’s fifteen-odd-year commitment to a singular vision. As the father and main member of the Swans since the early eighties, he perpetuated an instantly recognizable style throughout perpetual personnel and sonic changes. While the Swans’ fellow New Yorkers and initial touring mates Sonic Youth became lost in a poptastic daydream of commercial acceptance, Gira got down in the underground and created masterworks like The Great Annihilator and Soundtracks for the Blind. Now the Swans are gone, and Gira is solo. Gira may be solo, but on The Body Lovers he gets musical assistance from familiars like Jarboe, who was the Swans’ other vocalist and occasional songwriter and who adds some beautiful melismas to this mix, Kris Force, James Plotkin, Mike Vaino, and Bill Rieflin, who contributes some stunning piano pummelling. This mostly instrumental composition highlights Gira’s ability to create unified and emotion-laden music without words and without playing everything himself. This record forwards Gira’s career but is also forward looking. It sounds distinct from the Swans, while it continues Gira’s futuristic focus on......
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The Body Lovers | Number One of Three | Review
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FM Outlook #49 | Danen JobeNew York Noise Has A Mid Life CrisisSonic Youth—A Thousand Leaves (DGC) The Body Lovers—One of Three (Young God/Atavistic) Sixteen years ago an amazing movement began in New York City. This was a movement which came out of Glenn Branca's infamous guitar orchestras, and was quickly dubbed the New York Noise movement. Most famous of these original groups (which also included Live Skull and 8 Eyed Spy) were Sonic Youth and Swans, who were often found touring together, making people's ears hurt all over the east coast. Sonic Youth captured the spooky tunings and hammered effects of Branca's symphonies, while Swans preferred the pounding thud, with Michael Gira's basso profundo screaming tales of greed and horror. Amazingly, both survived and evolved. Gira added female vocalist Jarboe and began exploring soft/hard and even industrial ("Time is Money (Bastard)" is the great Nine Inch Nails predecessor) styles. Sonic Youth added poppy hooks and long dreamy passages on albums like "Evol" and "Sister." In the late eighties, the groups hit their peaks with Sonic Youth's "Daydream Nation" and Swans' "Children of God." From there, Sonic Youth became media darlings and headlined Lollapalooza while Swans hit the underground and......