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The Swans Mark Prindle
(Look, that was a great guess and I'm very proud of you, but please don't let my fiancee know I'm a fishmonger. She would like totally wig out, man).
This one isn't so much TORTUROUS (that would come later!) as headbangingly cool. Yeeeesssss, the songs are mostly mid- to slow-tempo and plodding, but Mr. Norman Westberg, now a member of Heroine Sheiks, plays all sorts of neat repetitious buzzing fizzle-dee-dee on his electric guitar. And man instinctively harbors an internal fondness for percussion that purposely tries to make one feel like he is being whipped and slammed into a wall over and over again. The vocals were kinda dumb at this point in the show -- leader Michael Gira just shouting everyything like a ridiculous young man who fancies himself a modern-day Coupe De Ville -- but the band had a neataroonie sound even this early. Like an interesting cross between industrial, goth and metal. Hmm. I suppose that doesn't sound very interesting in these days of Nine Inch "Poetic Genius" Nails and Marilyn "Talented" Manson, but the way Gira and his S&M-loving bondage boys present it, it comes across as a lot less hokey than you'd think. Probably because the "riffs" are catchy. Marquis De Sade. That's who I meant. Not "Coupe De Ville." Go back and change that for me if you would.
This one starts off tricking you into thinking that the Swans have become a guitar-heavy metal band, but by a couple songs in, the AXE is relegated to the background and it's all rhythm and yelling from then on. Some of the rhythms are awesome though. Fantastic drum sound as described in that last review. Bass isn't doing anything but serving as an extra drum though. This particular album isn't exactly "musical," which is fine and dandy for a while because you can still bang your head to a bangy drum and heavy bass note banging over and over. But by the end you're kinda aching for a melody and you just want Whatsisname to shut up. SHUT UP, WHATSISNAME!!!! David Coverdale of Whitesnake once told me that this was his favorite album of all time. He loves that "Black Dog" song a lot and Page's wicked solo in "Stairway" blows his fuckin' mind, man.
Thump Thump Pittup SMASH... Thump Thump Pittup SMASH... More aggrieved male howling, pulseless drumbeats, guitar white noise and some twisty bass strings too! Torturing you, torturing me. Have I mentioned these guys' subject matter yet? If it's any indication, one of the four tracks on this EP is called "Raping A Slave." I keep asking them to do a cover of "Takin' Care Of Business," but they've been ignoring me since day number one after the birth of Christ Our Saviour. If this were a full album, this stuff would get as monotonous as it does on Cop, but there's only four tunes here so it starts, pounds and ends. YAAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYYAAYAYA! Pardon me for that outburst. I suddenly felt an only slightly controllable urge to, as The Who might say, "Get My Ya-Yas Out At Leeds!"
* Body To Body, Job To Job - Young God 1991. * This CD is so depressing that it is actually about to make me break down and start crying. This is not a band to turn to when you feel bad. I'm not sure exactly how they do it, but the tones they choose and the slow, methodical way they present them somehow set up a mood of unending gloom and pain. Life is never going to get any better. I am going to feel like this until the day I die. I don't want to, but I can't stop. I try everything they tell me to do and nothing works. I don't deserve to be alive. I am wasting a perfect life. I'm blowing it. I know I will lose it all soon. I can't keep it together anymore. It's too much. If you don't feel it, I can't explain it. I see no possible end to the psychologic, emotional, mental torture that my brain puts me through every second of every day. I would be better off dead and everybody who knows me, especially those closest to me, would be better off if I was dead. I hate myself so much, it astonishes me that anybody bothers to like me. I am a worthless piece of shit. I can't even tell the difference between fatigue and depression anymore. Am I depressed because I'm tired? Or tired because I'm depressed? And why am I anxious 24 hours a day? As you may be able to tell, this is the absolute finest example of the Swans' ability to take a shaky mood and completely smash it into pieces. There is no light on this recording. And it is a LONG double-album recording. Goes back and forth between studio and live pieces recorded between 81 and 85, with each track more punishing and cruel than the last. This is the sound of ultimate despair. Nobody I've heard has recreated it this convincingly, not even Neurosis. This is the one. For God's sake, don't buy this album. It is perfect Swans.
Huh? Piano? Calmer non-shouted vocals? Background voices? Songwriting dynamics? This could only mean one thing -- someone let a woman into the band!!!! And indeed such a thing did occur. "Jarboe," who apparently used to be a prostitute or somesuch, joined the band and from the sounds of it did a great deal to bring Mr. Gira and company away from the "noise" side of things and closer to the "goth" side of things. The guitar now takes backseat not only to the drums, but also to newfound piano, chanting, synth noises and such. At times (for example, in "Fool"), their attempt to be taken seriously overshoots the mark into laughability, but there are still tons of neat machinery noises and gloomy ambience noises on here - and much more diversity than on previous Swans releases. Part of me wants to give this a 9, but then I smack that part of me down and remind it that every song on here sounds like it took about 30 seconds to write. But an intense, brain-racking 30 seconds, mind you.
Even more musical growth sorta! One song has a harmonica. Jarboe woman even sings lead on one tune! Still immeninenently depressing but in a slightly less deadening way than that Body To Body thing I just reviewed. They're slowly creeping towards actual musicalness, but still mostly industrial. The guitar sequences are ugly, the drums are still pounding and reverbing all over the dungeon, and all added sound effects are intended mainly to creep you out. Great stuff! "A Hanging" is, in fact, the first Swans song I ever heard and still one of my absolute favorites. My old band the Low-Maintenance Perennials even did a stupid tribute/parody/ripoff of it on our popular The Solo Album CD! Can not one thing of such to be ever forgiven and understood? At least on this one there's beauty. Early Swans? No beauty, just pain. Swans with Jarboe? Beautiful pain. Harmonies atop ugliness. Gorgeously cry-making piano lines (not on this record per se, but soon - hold your fucking horses, assho!!!!!). And a woman with a high womanlike voice to sing with which. Hey! Stop chewing on my bunion!!!!
This one was originally a bootleg, I'm told, of a 1986 live show. Only has six songs but you can better bet that they're way too long, poorly recorded, repetitive and trudging! This would have been an interesting era in which to see this band play live. You'd either fall asleep, get a neckache from banging your head so hard or pick up some foxy chick for a lil' lovin' in the videogame room, know what I'm sayin', baby? A little tongue in the ass action, baby, howzabout it huh? Come on now, you know you want to suck the cum out of my ass..... ALRIGHT - WHO BROKE INTO MY APARTMENT AND WROTE THOSE LAST FEW SENTENCES???? I'M ON A MISSION TO BECOME A RESPECTED YOUNG MUSIC CRITIC WHO DOESN'T RELY ON CHEAP, GROSS HUMOR AND IT'S NONSENSE LIKE THIS THAT CAN RUIN MY REPUTATION! WHY, WHAT IF AN IMPORTANT EDITOR FROM SPIN OR ROLLING STONE WERE TO READ THIS???? WHAT WOULD HE THINK???? I'LL TELL YOU EXACTLY WHAT HE'D THINK!!!!! Not much. Those fuckheads don't have brains.
Children Of God - Caroline 1987. To give you another indication of exactly how suffocatingly depressing the Swans can be, I'd like to point out that I only made it halfway through this CD before my fiancee demanded that I remove the CD and never listen to the Swans again. Not only did it make her sad, but she (rightly so) worried that it was bad for my current emotional state. And it is. I'm basically holding on by a thread here, waiting for the new anti-depressant to kick on (which won't be for another month or so, if it works at all). But dammit, the kids are demanding Swans reviews and I must deliver, even if it kills me. Okay, so I listened to three Motorhead CDs and have now returned to finish listening to tihs one. Hmm. You know, a lot of people think of this as the best Swans album, but I don't. Not at all. They have switched their focus to "goth" music, which means there are pianos, acoustic guitars and gentle "sad" songs, but only a few fantastically deadening outbursts of industrial noise. That, to me, is what the Swans were all about. Pain and catharsis (or lack thereof). This new sound, though more diverse in mood, can get a lot less interesting really quickly. The Swans were fantastic at crushing your spirit with anger, noise and drums, whether there was much melody there or not. But if you're going to play actual "music," you have to develop interesting melodies and, in my opinion, the Swans fail to do that consistently on this record. However, it DOES have some killer tunes that may very well give you them goosebump things if you let 'em. "New Mind," "I'll Swallow You," "Sex, God Sex," and the title track all do this for me. But stuff like "Blackmail"? "Trust Me"? "Real Love"? I dunno. If you're not already depressed, it's just kinda boring. Strangely, the first half depressed the living shit out of me, but the second half is not doing so. Hmm. Isn't it bizarre that I'm rating the Swans on how depressed they can make me? I'm doing that because that's the POINT of the Swans. Because they so often neglect the basic human need of musical interestingness, if they fail to depress, they fail to impress. If I want spooky organ noises and tentative piano lines, I'd might as well just listen to Joy Division or The Cure, right? What's so special about a Swans that doesn't consistently whip you into submission?
I'll tell you what's so special about them -- if they put their nose to grindstone and bother writing memorable melodies, they can put out an EXCELLENT goth album! You can actually sing along with every song on here. And you'll want to! Sad, yes, but at times somehow hopeful in its beauty -- the song "Saved," for example. A POSITIVE SWANS SENTIMENT??? Hell, they even do a Steve Winwood cover! "Bring Me A Higher Love"! Okay, it's not really "Bring Me A Higher Love," but they DO do a Steve Winwood cover - "Can't Find My Way Home" -- which fits in with the mood of the entire album. One of my main problems with the last record was that the strings and pianos and acoustic guitars weren't used in an intelligent manner. They seemed to be thrown in haphazardly in an attempt to show off the Swans' new rainbow ofsounds. The Burning World, on the other hand, sounds like a completely different band. There is no pounding, no anger -- just a well-produced (by Bill Laswell!) collection of somber, lovely musical pieces. Maybe not what Swans fans were expecting or desiring, but really, really good nonetheless. Doubtlessly the most pretty album of their career, in a Nick Cave sort of way (Gira even sings like Nick Cave now!). SAD but not depressing. This album is also available as a limited edition CD called Forever Burned, with the bonus track "Love Will Tear Us Apart" and some songs from Love Of Life and White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity. I guess they don't like the album for some reason. Maybe because it's actually pleasant to listen to.
White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity - Young God 1991. Bunnies Bunnies! Hoppy Bunnies! Cotton Tail and Screwing All The Time! The production on this one seems a bit brighter than on the last one. Not as relaxing. Some rat-a-tat-ing drums every once in a while to get you off your lazy couch potato ass. Hits my left ear as reminiscent of the sad, lovely nature of The Burning World and hits my lower left ear as similar to the angry, accusing mood of Children Of God. "Failure," for example -- an amazing song for sure, but if you can make it to the end of the song without starting to believe that your entire life has been a failure, then mister you're a better man than Eye. Like the last one, the sound is very full with guitars, keyboards, bass, pianos, a few more keyboards - lots of RINGING, arpeggiated guitar lines to stress the importance of their subject matter in a way that chords just won't do, baby doll sugar pits! The record is really good. Not as consistent in my mind as the last one, but tons of excellent Swanny tunes on here. Even my woman loves "Better Than You"! Great goddamned song! Other subject matter? "You Know Nothing"! "Will We Survive?" "Why Are We Alive?" But don't stress out. There's brightness too. You just have to search for it. These Swans are no longer out to make you feel bad. They just want you to feel alive, in all its pain, confusion wonder. That was pretty sissyish, wasn't it? What I MEANT to write was "Swans Love Sweet Carolina Pussy!!!"
Love Of Life - Young God 1992. ....Hey! Norman Westberg is gone! What the hell did you do with Norman Westberg????? WHY???? WHY GODDAMN YOU FUCKING SON OF A WHORE????? Ah who cares. He hasn't had a chance to buzz us to oblivion for several years anyway. This album is REALLY bright and shiny, relatively fast-paced (by sluggish Swans standards, anyway) and full of droning, mesmerizing repetitive collections of instruments all playing notes around the same chords. MAN, did I phrase that intelligently! What I'm getting at is that a lot of these songs will soothe you, in spite of their sadness. And the ones that don't will kinda make you shake your head around and boogie ("Amnesia," for example! Are you POSITIVE that this is the Swans? It's so damned bouncy and dancey!!! Fanastistiice!). There's also a bunch of little soundbites and shit on here that do nothing but waste space (almost a full 6 minutes of it!). Most of these songs are excellent (not "She Crys For Spider" though - sounds like a Chrissie Hynde ballad or something!). Minimally written, perhaps, but gorgeously built up, produced and laid out like a deck of pituitary glands on my wang. Okay. I'm going to think clearly and try to explain exactly what is so appealing about this period of Swans output. The chords they choose are minor chords. Sad and spooky. They lay down a drone with piano, keys, bass and guitars -- and repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. And your life becomes a desparate search for religious guidance - or at least some reason why we're alive. The Swans aren't about sex and pain anymore. They're about love and non-love, life and non-life, God and non-God. They strike an unforgettable, unignorable chord in the human soul. Because they're SMART AS SHIT. Overdramatic? Maybe, maybe not. Humorless? Oh hell yes. Definitely. But the sound they create - the louder you play it, the more you just want to reach your hands to sky and cry out for something to believe in. Some reason to go on. Somehow Radiohead and Beck simply don't have the same effect on me. I give this record an extremely high 8, is what I do indeed. Maybe even a 9. Yes! A 9! But with only 8 dots!
The Great Annihilator - Young God 1995. HEY!!! NORMAN GREENBAUM IS BACK!!!! WHAT DID YOU DO TO WOO BACK NORMAN FELL???? Balderdash! Not sure what got into Michael Gira in 1994, but this is like a high-speed hardcore album compared to the rest of his catalogue! The song tempos for some reason alter between midtempo and UPtempo, rather than deadly slow as in the past of my past and yours as well quit trying to separate yourself from me we were born together and we're going to die together you and i hold my hand we'll be able to fly baby i'm your man! So yeah -- it's not Steve Miller, but the songs do kinda move along at steady tempos previously unheard of by this group of nihilists, sadists and Reaganists. This at times threatens to make them sound like any typical showoffy alt guitar band (Couldn't you just imagine Sonic Youth doing "Celebrity Lifestyle" and "She Lives!"? Couldn't you just hear Eric's Trip doing the title track? Couldn't you just hear They Might Be Giants being buried in a deep, deep hole in the middle of the desert?), but for the most part they manage to avoid genericism and give us lots more awesome defiant stushifft! Great echoey sound, beautiful background vocals (did i mention that? the last few albums have all had kind of chanting backup vocals - you can't even really tell they're voices - they just blend in with the rest of the somber soundscape), well-written melodies ("Killing For Company," baby!!!! "Blood Promise," too!!!), and just more solid Swanitude. What more is there to say about the Swans? By the way, my fiancee is currently lying in bed in the other room, unable to get out of bed because this music is depressing her so much. HA HAHAHA!! AA A HHAHAHAHHH`1~!~~ DhgAHHAAHEKR!!!! f EEEEE!! DAHAHAHAHAH~!!~~! FDJRIEIELVEL!!! EW""A"W"A"A"!!! VDJTEJJDFKJVKJEKJV~!!~!~! IWSSISISISI!!!! AA{{EJHSDJ!!! VNVVFEQ{{F{F{{{{{{!!!! SHAHAHASHHSH!!!! F F DJFJDJJFDJJ!!!! CFEIFDIRSENFF!!!! MICHELLE PFEIFFER'S LAST NAME SOUNDS LIKE A TOOT FACTORY!!!!!
Soundtracks For The Blind - Altavistic 1996. I don't know the story behind this two and a half hour final studio effort from the Swans, and I don't much give a patootie. But I'll say this, my friends and loved ones, if every Swans album sounded like this, I wouldn't be a Swans fan. The stuff all sounds like it was recorded by one person. A keyboard simmering by itself for 10 minutes. Michael "crooning" with a warbly voice that shouldn't be crooning. Boring samples of people talking. Chanting - by itself. Empty atmospherics instead of actual songs. Even the actual songs take three or four minutes to finally get going. What is this - EnoSwans? My fiancee claims that this stuff still passes as depressing but I think it's just boring. It certainly doesn't make my dingaling wag around like a good bunch of songs would. Nothing happens. Fuck it up the ass with your dingaling! Oh okay, there are a few neat bits of sound. One song has a flute or something. And both "The Final Sacrifice" and "Helpless Child" are nice and creepy. But most of it? Just sounds pretentious and go-nowherey. Bah!
Swans Are Dead - Altavistic 1998. Ahhhh. This is the Swans I've grown to live and tolerate with vibrations of mother's milk. I suppose they realized they couldn't just go on stage live and do little keyboard bleeps and bloops, so this endless double-CD of two concert shows (one from '95 and one from '97, like you give a shit) is Swans as Swans will. Slow, repetitive, sad. Industrialish. Moody. Dark. Rolling and grinding. Yelling and crooning. Awfully long though, and not nearly as textured and spiritually smoldering as the awesome studio releases. And too much ugly girl yelling. While we're on the subject, it's very odd to hear the Wild Swans pound away at a single chord for 17 minutes and then hear a crowd hoot, holler and clap -- but THAT'S AMERICA!!!! They also have several other live CDs you can buy and smell, including Public Castration Is A Good Idea, Omniscience and Feel Good Now. Maybe someday I'll buy them and review them. Maybe I won't. How the hell come the furniture guy's not here yet? We've been waiting all frickin' day for the sumwhore, but nuttin goddfufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufj. Another 32 minutes, then the guy gets a KICK in the watusi! Where's my couch? Where's my bed? Where's my chair? Where's my patio set? Where's my reversible television? Where's my enormous bust of Denny Atkin, former editor-in-chief of Computer Games magazine? Where's my G-spot? In my prostate? Hang on.... WHOOOOAAAAAAA!!!!!!
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