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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......
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Swans | Swans Are Dead | Review
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Ink #19 | Drew WestThey were, are, and will always be the most powerful band in the world live.A banshee screams while the Vikings swing hammers and swords into their enemies. I sense sweat pouring from faces. Every soul being destroyed from within the shell it lives. The anger, resentment, and rawness cuts through even the hardest heart. No one ever does it like Swans. Even through the CD, I get goose bumps. I can't explain it. When I watched Swans in Atlanta for the last time, my body went numb. Every hair stood on end. I was waiting for lightning to come through the ceiling and ignite my body. So I ask why? Why must I suffer? Why are they doing this to us? Why does it have to end? They were, are, and will always be the most powerful band in the world live. We have only two CDs to remember them, but they exhibit nothing but perfection. It is Swans. Gira mixed both live recordings and "bootlegs" from fans to capture the emotions. I have never heard a live recording capture "live" like this before, and probably never will again. The songs included do not matter, because......
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Swans | Swans Are Dead | Review
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SF Weekly | Dave CliffordSwans Are Dead, the final act of attritionAttrition—the act of wearing away a surface through repeated rubbing, or the gradual reduction of will through constant waves of repetition—is the defining characteristic of Swans. In the 15-year existence of the now-finished group, vocalist/guitarist Michael Gira and a revolving door of contributors—the most significant of these being longtime vocalist/keyboardist Jarboe—sought to isolate and exaggerate the limitations of music. Where rhythm and melody traditionally embody a song, Swans have dissected it. Where lyrical themes traditionally ignore the visceral and brutal sides of sexuality, Swans have sought to magnify them. On early recordings like Filth and Young God, Swans hammered single or double beats of a measure and a melody into plodding tempos. The result was simplistic, brutal, and anti-melodic. But once Gira had mastered the form, he abandoned it in favor of a new sound, one in which chiming Middle Eastern drones were infused with a rhythmic impulsion. The melodicism cost the band a considerable following in the early 90s. Swans Are Dead, the final act of attrition, contains live recordings culled from their final world tours of 1995 and 1997. Here, as clever as always, Swans' music atomizes......
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Review | SWANS ARE DEAD
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TimeOut New York | Issue No. 126 | Jordan N. MamoneGira & Co.'s discography is rich in masterful concert documents, and this pristinely recorded capper is no different.Over the course of a 15-year existence, Swans built up a solid reputation for blinding intensity and brutal honesty. Leader Michael Gira was so unafraid to explore the limits of the crushingly leaden and the mystically ethereal that his compositions and from-the-gut emotional frankness occasionally verged on the ridiculous. More often, his tunnel vision and severity intensified music of a singular power unmatched in its sensuous physicality and visionary depth. Swans leave behind a legacy as the most radical aesthetic dissenters from the golden age of '80s NYC tumult rock, yet also as the most faithful adherents to that scene's sternness and experimental edge. A force of extremes and paradoxes, their bowing out with an exorbitant but necessary double-live CD is only appropriate. Swans Are Dead is rough going if you're averse to Gira's obsessively dark, rhythmic repetition, but otherwise it's a rewarding final chronicle of one of the most fascinating forces ever to grace a stage. Gira & Co.'s discography is rich in masterful concert documents, and this pristinely recorded capper is......
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Swans | Swans Are Dead | Review
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PathosDeath Is Not The EndLive double albums used to be the sound of artistically exhausted rock bands fulfilling their contractual obligations in the easiest, yet most decadent manner possible. Now that records of remixes seem to constitute the modern equivalent of this void filler, the artists who actually release live material are usually either dead or have something to say. In the case of the Swans, both are equally true. One of the greatest things to come out of the amazing New York of the early eighties, up to last year the Swans produced unique music. The band passed through many castings, of which the only constant were the voice and compositions of Michael Gira. As each of their studio albums, which are in the process of being re-released on Young God Records, constitutes a distinct musical and philosophical entity, each of the current digipaks is an equally worthy introduction to their music. What distinguishes Swans Are Dead is that it contains performances of the best Swans material of the last half decade in versions that significantly differ from their original counterparts. Except for some modestly edited wild audience response at the end of each song, the recording sounds cleaner......