PRESS
-
M. Gira | Solo Recordings at Home | Review
()
All Music Guide | Ned RaggettGira had discussed the idea of releasing a stripped-down release for some time......before the appearance of Solo Recordings at Home, and, as with most things he put his mind to, the end results easily justified the wait. While his later work in Swans and the Angels of Light had incorporated more acoustic efforts, usually as part of song arrangements, Solo Recordings squarely places the emphasis on Gira's voice and guitar only, captured at home via one microphone (an exception being the roughly recorded concert effort "Irish Queen"). Given the sheer emotional resonance of his lyrics -- a number of his efforts here, like the slow, loping "Surrogate" or "On the Mountain," are among his bluntest ever -- the nature of the performances is astonishingly direct as a result. In keeping with his post-Swans work, though, Gira's singing balances command with empathy, cracked and tender at once; anyone not taken with his late-'90s singing won't be convinced here, though fans will find it addictive. His guitar playing similarly can shift on a dime from sudden, brusque runs to gentler, steady fingerpicking, evoking everything from strung out rural blues to Nick Drake's hushed emptiness while still sounding......
-
M. Gira live | Review
()
The Wire | Jim Haynes & Philip SherburneBeyond the Pale Festival SF Great American Music Hall...By the time Michael Gira, backed by a stripped down version of his Angels of Light, came on, the audience had become testy. Unexpectedly dignified in his sharp linen suit, Gira looked like a gaunt version of actor Russell Crowe. Fleshed out by multi-instrumentalists Dana Schechter and Larry Mullins, Gira's bellowing and sometimes grunting baritone voice worked like a disturbance beneath clean strummed monochords, pulling at the notes like a magnet. A set of mostly recent material soared with a grandiosity that belied its earthen context of love and bitterness. There was a hint of humour, though; as the audience hooted for the 1991 Swans song "Failure" Gira shot back,"You clap for a song about my father dying? You fucking misanthropes." But he threw the crowd off its feet for a second time as he smiled and retracted the statement......
-
M. Gira live | Review
()
The Wire | Jim Haynes & Philip SherburneBeyond the Pale Festival SF Great American Music Hall...By the time Michael Gira, backed by a stripped down version of his Angels of Light, came on, the audience had become testy. Unexpectedly dignified in his sharp linen suit, Gira looked like a gaunt version of actor Russell Crowe. Fleshed out by multi-instrumentalists Dana Schechter and Larry Mullins, Gira's bellowing and sometimes grunting baritone voice worked like a disturbance beneath clean strummed monochords, pulling at the notes like a magnet. A set of mostly recent material soared with a grandiosity that belied its earthen context of love and bitterness. There was a hint of humour, though; as the audience hooted for the 1991 Swans song "Failure" Gira shot back,"You clap for a song about my father dying? You fucking misanthropes." But he threw the crowd off its feet for a second time as he smiled and retracted the statement......
-
M. Gira live | Review
()
The Wire | Jim Haynes & Philip SherburneBeyond the Pale Festival SF Great American Music Hall...By the time Michael Gira, backed by a stripped down version of his Angels of Light, came on, the audience had become testy. Unexpectedly dignified in his sharp linen suit, Gira looked like a gaunt version of actor Russell Crowe. Fleshed out by multi-instrumentalists Dana Schechter and Larry Mullins, Gira's bellowing and sometimes grunting baritone voice worked like a disturbance beneath clean strummed monochords, pulling at the notes like a magnet. A set of mostly recent material soared with a grandiosity that belied its earthen context of love and bitterness. There was a hint of humour, though; as the audience hooted for the 1991 Swans song "Failure" Gira shot back,"You clap for a song about my father dying? You fucking misanthropes." But he threw the crowd off its feet for a second time as he smiled and retracted the statement......
-
Angels of Light | How I Loved You | Review
()
PopMatters | Wilson NeateThis Is (Not) a Love SongI love that object, but even more I hate it; because I love it, and in order not to lose it, I embed it in myself; but because I hate it, the other within myself is a bad self, I am bad, I am non-existent, I shall kill myself ‹ Julia Kristeva The Angels of Light's Michael Gira is perhaps still best known as frontman of Swans, the avant-garde New York band responsible for some of the most extreme and confrontational noise-terror of the early '80s. At their most uncompromising, Swans weren't a band whose records you enjoyed in the privacy of your own home, unless you lived in bedlam or a torture chamber. Swans had to be witnessed live, in all their disturbing, distressing glory. Only in that context, with the volume loud enough to break the human spirit, did it all make sense. This was a band seeking some kind of perverse salvation or purification by plunging itself and its audience into the depths of total sonic and lyrical abjection. With titles like "A Hanging", "Butcher", and "Raping a Slave", Swans' tracks were not songs -- or music for that......