PRESS

Angels of Light sing “Other People”

Apr 30, 2005

UNCUT, Take 96, May 2005 | by Rob Young

Character studies and convulsive beauty in Michael Gira’s portrait album

Michael Gira says a song is “just something that passes through me”. In Swans it passed like a bowel motion, but in Angels of Light, he allows himself greater reflective space. Gira keeps things drumless, employing members of Akron/Family in a rich, acoustic chamber odyssey, sketching a procession of characters at once familiar (Michael Jackson, Saddam and Bush) and mythic. The pace and register of the record seldom alter: the soundscape is always more baked earth than lush foliage.