PRESS
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Swans | Swans Related Projects | Review
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Hypnono way limited to any definable genreThe SWANS initial release, 4 SONG EP, in 1982 was a stunner. "Shocking" may not be too strong a word. Loud, noisy, dreadfully slow, torturous music behind even more tortured vocals. Next to this record even JOY DIVISION is a campfire sing-a-long. NICO is a cheerleader. I had not heard, up to that point, an album of such powerful grating noise, and such sadness and beauty all at the same time. The intervening recordings were always interesting. They experimented a lot. Or, at least, stylistic variation from record to record was surprisingly varied. They confounded fans. Their version of Love Will Tear Us Apart is downright pretty. Most of the fans that I know consider their output uneven, with differing and strongly held opinions on which album is strongest. SWANS consist of M. Gira and Jarboe and for the current work each of them has produced what is actually a solo record. Each contributes a CD to the two CD set. Each CD has in common a dark and noisy, how shall I say this?, lushness, fullness unusual in Noise Music. I probably shouldn't even use the term Noise Music. This work is in......
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Swans / M. Gira | The Great Annihilator / Drainland | Review
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Rolling StoneGreat Annihilator ***, Drainland ***A decade ago SWANS were a seminal noise band, a contemporary influence on Sonic Youth and a predecessor to Nine Inch Nails. But Swans' aggressively ugly music—loud, slow and monotonously grinding—combined with singer M. Gira's queasy lyric stew of sadistic sex and violence guaranteed a limited audience. Since then they've somehow perservered largely unheard, on the fringe's fringe. Even more surprising given their monotonic original sound they've evolved. The current Swans consist of Gira on vocals, guitar and miscellaneous sounds, and a woman named Jarboe on vocals and keyboards plus whoever they can get to fill out the rhythm section. The music has opened up a great deal. New Age electronic pastels are as likely to be part of the mix as the band's signature metallic harshness. What have remained are Gira's transgressive lyrics and brutal attitude. Annihilator is rife with tales of mutilating murders either in love with their victims or the power of their own cruelty. Gira structures his songs like repetitive loops—a few bars and you've usually heard the whole scheme—and this lack of resolution, of catharsis, contributes to the overall ominous feel. Add to this Gira's deep, weary drawl—monsters, while never......
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Swans | Swans Related Projects | Review
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The Wire | Biba Kopfreturn to the scenes of Swans crimesSwans Related Project: M Gira Drainland Swans Related Project: Jarboe Sacrificial Cake Down the years and despite the growth, the stylistic permutations and the occasional aberrations into something resembling warmth, Swans have been such a single-minded project you have to wonder why its perpetrator Michael Gira would need to make a solo album. Granted, you can see how Jarboe needs space elsewhere to express ideas that fall outside Gira's scheme of things. The great success of these Swans Related Projects is how they return to the scenes of Swans crimes, so to speak, and light them up differently, and then again entirely different from each other. Aptly titled, Gira's Drainland is drained of blood, tears and excess emotion. Its songs are autopsies, body parts laid out on the mortician's slab and spoken-sung in bleak monotone. Well, Gira has always been the most Beckett-like of songwriters. Interlocking word and image in a manner that superficially suggests simple body mechanics—skull connected to your neckbone, etc. Yet the accumulative impact of bare-boned lines dovetailed with equally pared rhythm and melody and muscle-toned with sparse noise samples is emotionally devastating. This is a document......
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M. Gira | Drainland | Review
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The Lizard | Jamie T. Conwayheavier than everAnd so you grow old. Naiveté is no longer your ally; forced to acknowledge the anguish and torment you so selfishly and effortlessly caused, you suffer similar betrayals without complaint, saddened not by your friends behavior but because you know their transgression was as inevitable as your own. You watch—sometimes with compassion, sometimes with guilty indifference—as tragedy comes crashing into their lives, battering them into hopeless submission. Start staring sadly at coffee stained photographs, indulging in the sappy sentimentality you despised in your youth. Then come the 2 a.m. phone calls and ward visits, the labored conversations with unrecognizable ricti, the growing realization you will one day be another crumbling, forgotten headstone in an overcrowded cemetery. And as you listen solemnly to another premature eulogy, you wish you could believe in the circuitous machinations of some idiot God as you search for a reason, a purpose, meaning, find... nothing. Eventually, all you want is to become numb, dull yourself to the pain. It's said that Michael Gira's music is no longer "heavy," as unthreatening as the bunnies adorning the cover of the later Swans albums. Wrong: it's heavier than ever, buckling under the......
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Swans | Swans Related Projects | Review
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Roadkilltwo extraordinary albumsM. Gira - Drainland Jarboe - Sacrificial Cake Let's get one thing straight. These LPs will not be bad. It is impossible for Gira to do anything remotely resembling a failure (apart from his immense song of the same name!). His solo offering should easily be a Swans LP on its own. The spacious almost choral backing is there in force, and the deep, deep vocals brood over the top. Some of the tracks seem to harken back to the more industrial era of Swans, particularly track 3, "I see them all lined up," but this adds variety to what is a huge album. Jarboe's LP is probably more pretty, but weirder. To hear her enchanting voice whisper about gribbly goblins and mushroom men as you fall asleep at night is nothing short of begging for a night of nightmare lunacy. She has moments of pure beauty, "My Buried Child" and pure horror, "The Body Lover." These contrasting emotions all add up in both cases to two extraordinary albums each of matching brilliance. Worth stealing from a friend for....