SWANS/M.Gira/ Angels of Ligt Apprecation Station

I've been listening to SWANS etc probably for as long as I can remember, I sold off a lot of my old lps in some stupid broken idiocy, but reclaimed most of them digitally (hey that rhymes)...

I'm not too fond of the latest Angels of Light "Every Thing is Good Here / Please Come Home" which got great pitchfork reviews comared to "How I loved You", which I thought was better, yet ETIGH/PCM is probably musically more advanced.

I don't trust pitchfork anyways. I was lucky enough to see them perform in Tampa, sometime way back when for the White Light From the Mouth of Infinity tour, and they were amazing.

I've pretty much listened to everything (except the original SWANS ep) to the present, and recently got the limited (now deleted) hand made re-rerelease of This Burning World, with extra tracks etc, hand signed which I was pretty jazzed about.

I think they made a major turn when they added Jarboe to their lineup, who had allready been doing some experimental voice music prehence.

Fans, haters, whathaveyou?

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[Edited on Feb 26, 2004 by JomRopGame]

god i hate jarboe

I loved everything they did right up to and including Children of God...
my favorites are the I crawled/raping a slave EP and Cop.... but Filth is right up there... I think visceral sums it up ...
I saw them play on the Children of God tour.. and it was quite a show.. That album came out at the peak of my youthful psychedelic consumption period; had some real odd times sitting in a dark room with Children of God shaking and comforting the world, by turns...


the later stuff just didn't have the same impact for me....

I think Jarboe is the key. For a long time, I thought that I didn't like Swans based on hearing Cop and Greed (and mabye some other pre-Jarboe things), but with Jarboe, I like it a lot more.

Jarboe did a solo tour with the Italian group Larsen last summer/fall that was amazing.

Hmm, I'll pass on the Angels of Light. I don't know what the ideas behind it are, but it mostly sounds like things that other people in my record collection do better.

I really don't like their "greed" era stuff, well I did then, but I don't so much now, because it has a more 'industrial' feel to it... though it was far better than a lot of stuff that came out then.

Oddly enough a lot of rock crits point to SWANS as a proto-type of bands like Godspeed! ...eh read what you will into that. It certainly sounds true if you listen to things like Music For the Blind... Great orchestral and semi repetetive lock grooves... almost the same as what Fly Pan Am's first album is and much G!YBE.

has anyone heard the news angels of light album, AoL sing other people. i have heard some of the acoustic versions that he did on his limited edition solo album, but i heard they are quite different. would listen to the MP3's but i'm studying abroad on the computer situtation sucks, i.e. me can no listen to MP3's. i'm interest because i'm seeing them in brussels in about a week.

I like AoL Sing Other People, but the newness of it still places it 4th on my list. That's not really a bad thing. It just has not had the time to grow on me as much as the other 3.

I'm not much of a Jarboe fan...In small doses I suppose. My first exposure to Swans was Children of God back in 86 or 87. I returned on the basis of "This crap is not music."

My opinion has since changed

Favorites are Children of God, Greed/Holy Money, Love of Life era, and Burning World. Least favorite is World of Skin.

I think creative music is lucky to have people like M. Gira producing art these days. The SWANS have always been what I refer to as a "T-Shirt band" and what I mean by that is this: One of those bands that is name dropped all over and you see kids wearing the shirt...but having been a fan yourself--you can tell these people have no clue as to what they are professing to like. I think the sheer brutality and punishing nature of early SWANS is a must here for anyone with a passing casual interest in modern rock....I also think the book that Gira wrote ( the Consumer-on Rollin's press) is by far one of the most intense collections this side of Kafka....
but yeah...in a nutshell...the SWANS rock....not sure about Jarboe-could never stand her solo shit...but every generation needs a NICO I suppose....

i like jarboe much better than nico (nico=very overrated; NOT a member of the velvet underground). have read some of the Consumer and liked the nightmarish quality to it after i got used to it. should probably familiarize myself with more mid period stuff.
also, i did one of the sexiest drag performances EVER to the swans cover of 'i want to be your dog' from the "world of skin" album.