Classic or Dud: Swans

The early recs are not totally for everyday listening, but have their place in showing how they got to where they ended up, and volume and repetition were always a constant (I also saw them on a 'White Light From The Mouth of Infinity' tour and they were fantastic that night as well)

These days I'm esp. in love w/ Soundtracks for the Blind and Swans are Dead, the 'final' recs in every sense (esp. dig the way that Gira gradually introduced taped/spoken word material into the Swans sound).

Angels of Light, most of Gira's solo recs (Drainland) and his even his bk are all great too!

go see gira live!!!

I quite love their later era stuff ala White Light from the Mouth of Infinity/Love of Life.

If I get on with those I suspect I'll be putting Cop / Young God / Greed / Holy Money and Soundtracks For The Blind on my list for Santa.

The World of Skin album "Ten Songs For Another World" is worth looking for used.

Oooh I tell you what though, they played ever so loud!

And in the 90s they introducing tapes, keyboards to their overall sound (see andrew's post on their last records or did you just set out to not read that) and when most bands makes changes to their 'classic' sound, its usually a disaster but not here.

It wasn't all just 'epic menace'.

is sheryl crow a band name or are you referring to that singer, in which case she would have a backing band? ;)

I'll put 'second phase' Swans on my list of things I must hear. Behind the grillion things I think there's at least the remotest chance I might like.

Now if they would only reissue Anonymous Bodies in an Empty Room.

'time is money, bastard' and 'a screw' are two of thee most intense and most wonderfully produced death disco 12"s ever released.

i'm a coward, stick a knife in me

Julio - ty for pimpin' for my post, but Tim's list indicates to me he wldn't dig early, mid OR late period Swans. I'd just say that "menace" is not really the right word to sum up Gira's aesthetic - PAIN is better, I think. As for volume, I know Tim is big on his reggae, and two of the other LOUDEST gigs I ever went to were by On-U-Sound, and by Jah Shaka - as with live Swans, it's all abt the bass and the body, innit

In their day (mid 80's) it seemed like 2nd rate No-wave/TG Noise.

V

Not all Swans albums are necessary but at least a few of them are.

then I caught 'em twice on the Burning World tour. early on in DC they kept it almost politely acoustic, even though they were revving loop riffs from the album. by the time they got to Tampa (weeks? months?) later all patience had worn thin and Swans had grown it to a pummelling all-out-assault, loud as ever.

for some reason when I think of them now first track I remember is the later "Love Will Save You", where Gira is mocked by children's voices/laughter. I saw him on a NYC subway car a couple years back, all Paul Bowles ex-pat linens & hat. thought about saying hello, but seemed more fun to catch his eye - maybe there's someone in the sea of faces who his music's meant something to.

"I'll be good fellas, honest..." (swear Lou Stathis wrote that first - if not sorry Jim Green)

"An entirely random selection of bands I think are better than The Swans, whose brand of "epic" "menace" is not for me, in order of
preference:
The Jays
The Wild Swans
The Orioles
The Byrds
The Penguins
The Blackbyrds
Robin Gibb
The Snowbirds
The Birds
Dawn Chorus and the Blue Tits
SwansWay
Wings
The Tweets
The Eagles
Sheryl Crow

Oooh I tell you what though, they played ever so loud!"

-- Tim (hopkinsti...), December 3rd, 2003. (Tim)

Dude didn't even list the Ravens. Who were better than every band he named. what a moron. And everyone knows that jimmy ricks was the one and only american who could have appreciated gira at his best.

The Swans weren't always "epic" and "menace". Often they were "quiet" and "introspective". Their career was lengthy, and managed to be extremely consistent while exploring different ways to express their unique, um, vision or whatever.

Angels of Light is very good as well.

Classic. Even their really early stuff is great, if only for the rhythm section.

Now, the ultimate Swans trivia question: What the hell happened to the sax player?

(Yeah, it's VH1 Classic, but still! "THE SEX IN YOUR SOUL WILL DAMN YOU TUH HELL! DAMN YOU TUH HELL!")

well it's hard to say that Gira ever really embraced "the song" fully - his melodic sense is always subservient to his love of drone (i.e., in song after song, each line of each verse follows an identical melodic line to the line before it; there are some exceptions to this, but they're just that, exceptions). he basically grafted his power-drone sensibilities into song-like environments imo. this has remained true throughout the Angels of Light years, too. the songs have verses and choruses but never a bridge (or "pre-chorus," to use a term I wish could be scrubbed from the language). the chorus melody varies from the verse melody, but usually only in the sense that it seems to complete the melodic line that's been harped on to the point of either transcendence or irritation. so I don't view the changeover as actually so much a change in content as a lowering of the volume, which is fine. but beyond that there's just Gira's writing = interesting and sometimes excellent, Jarboe's writing = seldom either to me.

The term "pre-chorus" always reminds me of when sex ed classes would use the term "pre-cum." O_O

OTM, btw.

what kind of messed up sex ed classes did you go to

well imo the change was about much more than a lowering of the volume (and if we're talking decibels the last few Swans tours were just as loud as the earlier ones). the words changed massively for one thing. the early lyrics being essentially an obsessive Beckettian recombining of a limited number of lyrical tropes, which turned into the widescreen Biblical imagery of the later years. plus of course the instrumentation became a lot more varied too.

xxxp

otm, saw swans on the burning world tour and they were plenty loud

what I liked about the whole greed/holy money/children of god era was that it was goth, goth with balls tho

plus I find stuff like "blackmail" or "I'll swallow you" 100% transcendent and beating gira at his own game, it wasn't like a jarboe song came on and there was a sudden notable drop in quality

plus the material seemed all of of a piece, and integrating yourself into an aesthetic as airless and ascetic as gira's is no small feat so I always give props to miss jarboe for that

wow, got this today, reallly good. definitely a swans album. way more LOL/White Light than Soundtracks. which is fine by me. already want to play it again. i take back whatever i said about being anti-comeback/reunion here or elsewhere. now i definitely want to go to a show. nice and concise too. album is only 44 minutes. as much as i respected the whole AOL venture i can't say that i listened to the albums that much. its funny cuz its still just gira but swans majik energy is just so addictive to me in a way that AOL stuff never was.

OK now I REALLY want to get this

"So now we're off on a new journey, by reigniting swans I've unlocked the trunk where I'd trapped my demon brother. Now that he's out again I am wrestling with him and am determined this time to not only kill him, but all his friends and family as well."

http://thequietus.com/articles/04724-michael-gira-review-new-swans-album-my-father-will-guide-me-up-a-rope-to-the-sky

otm, saw swans on the burning world tour and they were plenty loud

man I saw em on burning world & then on great annihilator

former was polite volume, latter was pummeling

I'm not sure if this is selling me on going or not. I know if I don't, part of me is really gonna regret it. Either way really looking forward to the album...really should have gone for the "oh and send me the finished CD option when ordering that Gira demos fundraiser CD".

saw them on final tour and it was up there with the two or three loudest concerts i've ever seen. not even sure if i'm physically strong enough to handle them this time around.

^^^^^
I was kind of dancing around the issue, but yeah, this.

I saw them on the Children of God tour, and it was ridiculously, unpleasantly, horribly loud. It was so crushingly slow that you had time to anticipate and dread each snare hit, which was like a cannon going off in your face. It was an abslolute endurance test to get through it, and despite loving them I couldn't decide whether I was actually enjoying seeing them (in all truth, and with the benefit of 20+ years hindsight I can admit that, no, it wasn't fun.

Still glad I went though.

I'd see them again in a heartbeat, but I'd take ear-plugs.

haha i think i'll be taking those firing-range headphones roger miller wears to be honest.

It was the same on the '97 tour, Gira was constantly urging the soundman to wring every last ounce of volume out of whatever PA the venue served up.

ha way way upthread i said that the ICA/Public Castration gig was the loudest thing I'd ever experienced, but since then I've seem some noise dudes who were def louder - Hijokaidan, for one. but yeah, 'pummeling' is almost exactly the right adjective - that sense/feeling of the next whomp descending, like a hammer.

also saw em on the children of god tour and didn't think it was that loud, really, and i wouldn't be surprised if they're not that fierce this time out, either. gira seems to find the whole mega-volume question/prob a bit wearying these days, and i'm sure there'll be an element of expectation-confounding. WE SHALL SEE.

L34k3d.

i didn't leak it i swear. i played it a lot in public in my record store though. does that count?

forgot to play it yesterday for th*r*t*n when he was in. would have been fun to hear his opinion. i do want to see swans in boston but i'm too cheap and i hate going to boston and i am frightened of baby dee.

yes I went to your store and memorised it and then digitally reproduced it bit by bit and then leaked it.

on first listen I like this a lot, sounds like Swans without being retready.

Any West Coast dates? I really wanna see Swans, they're like one of the only "goth" things I like.

OK maybe the Cure

09-17 Boston, MA - House of Blues
09-21 Northampton, MA - Calvin Theater

tempted to go the Boston show. scott, isn't the Northampton one pretty close to where yr at?

scott if you go to the boston show I will protect you from baby dee

and don't listen to markers, he's trying to trick you into seeing broken social scene

woah i didn't even see a northampton date when i looked! and when i looked, like, last week they were playing at the middle east and not house of blues! i'm confused! will totally go to the hamp show! a week before my birthday too.

oh okay. that got me all excited.

wait, i fucked up on those tour dates

sry yall

http://pitchfork.com/news/38743-reformed-swans-announce-tour/

scrolled down too much and accidentally copied bss dates

only the middle east :-(

man I saw em on burning world & then on great annihilator

former was polite volume, latter was pummeling

― gross rainbow of haerosmith (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Thursday, August 5, 2010 10:11 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark

sometimes I wonder if ppl's experience of swans is colored by what venue they saw them at? I wouldn't call their burning world show at CBGBs pummeling but I couldn't in fairness call it polite.

a friend told me the last time they played boston gira complained non-stop about the sound, stopped the show early, and stormed off saying he'd never play the middle east again. so where's the boston show this time around? o right, the middle east.

Very positive (but rather woolly) review of the new album in the new Wire -- makes me look forward to this even more.

last show i saw at the middle east downstairs (not sure if the swans is up or down) was harry and the potters iirc

gotta be downstairs, if it's upstairs god have pity on our souls + ears

last time i saw swans was swans are dead tour at the troc in philly and it was awesome. plenty loud but you didn't die from loud. sounded great. that's where they are opening the tour. i think. last time i checked.

bouncer i knew who worked at the troc said the loudest show he had worked was mogwai at tla. and from people i know who went, the last time godflesh played philly it was louder than the loudest loud. people visibly swooning from loud...

I heard when swans played the troc on the children of god tour they blew the power 3 times and called it a night

woulda been pissed if I'd gone but it was 21+ and I was 21-

haven't mbv taken the title now? I mean I didn't see them on their last tour but even the bootleg recordings sound louder than the loudest loud.

> I heard when swans played the troc on the children of god tour they blew the power 3 times and called it a night

you just knocked loose a memory of seeing them at the 9:30 at that time, where IIRC the power blew at least once.

ATTN: Herr Raggett!

I seem to remember you contributing to the thread that presently is dominating ILx: but I hope you don't mind me asking you, as the allmusic scribe re: the following act…

If I want to get one Swans album only— and here I believe that this means meanest, heaviest, berserk with bloodlust, etc, although you may not find that to be the case— which should it be?

scanned threads for an obvious recommendation as such, couldn't locate one, know redundant verbiage herein is not yr favorite…

thanks!

i took this shot with one of those olde-tyme film cameras.

https://scontent-b-lga.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/t1.0-9/10174786_10152989869072137_4991361121037997380_n.jpg

slightly different view.

https://scontent-b-lga.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc1/t1.0-9/1979720_10152989872817137_1844411752821021782_n.jpg

and my art shot.

https://scontent-a-lga.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/t1.0-9/1920630_10152989874767137_4682779992592093522_n.jpg

Didn't even notice Veronica's post yesterday, sorry about that!

Uh, meanest and heaviest? Hm. I mean the earliest stuff is the most 'punishing' per se but the current era is transcendently pulverizing, so.

well I wanna start with something from the era in which they initially made their mark…like Filth?

oddly, I picked up To Mega Therion the other day, and later saw that you are AMG's Celtic Frost scholar as well…

If you aren't specifically asking Ned, I'd strongly suggest the Cop/Young God/Greed/Holy Money collection. Filth is great but I don't think any other Swans studio album or collection of albums beats C/TH/G/HM for sheer prolonged brutality.
Children Of God/World Of Skin is more accessible if you're worried about that but I remember finding C/TH/G/HM surprisingly easy, because it seemed like it might have been difficult.

Consider this another vote for Cop/Young God/Greed/Holy Money, three albums and a couple of 12" singles jammed onto a two-CD set. If you like that, pick up the live album Public Castration Is A Good Idea from the same era. The songs get almost twice as long sometimes; play it loud enough to make your neighbors cry.