Swans and Angels

Swans - Children of God/World of Skin

Young God, 1987 - '88

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Angels of Light - Everything is Good Here/Please Come Home

Young God, 2003

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Children of God/World of Skin: This beast of a 2-part album goes into the stereo and all I can think is "holy shit, it all makes sense now." I've been an Angels of Light junkie for a few months now. I can't escape it. The way the songs don't have to have anything happen in order to work. The way the music is a mood and a melody and the layers and the echoing poetry and all of it just overwhelms me.

That's what this album is. Everything is Good Here/Please Come Home: Poetry spread out over chords and rythyms. Melody is secondary but inherent. The repition seems to deepen the impact of everything without getting too, well, repetitious (New Mother, on the other hand, has a tendency to grind and drag a bit in comparison). When the melody is strpped away and the same notes work over and over, everything sort of clicks. It's like trance for people who like to hear real strings and vocals with thought.

And the vocals! If I were a woman I'm sure I'd get wet as Gira drags his voice across the floor. As a dude, I'm only allowed to get weak-kneed and wish I could stretch my vocal cords so loose. He sounds grand without coming across as self-indulgent, which I guess is one of the hang-ups his music confronts anyway. He sounds like the villian with the deep laugh, only you never really care about the villian as much as you care about Gira. There's a fair amount of that from-the-depths-of-the-crypt chanting and the rest of the Angels join in to offer backup when more support would come in handy.

And I want more.

So I get Filth/Body to Body, Job to Job. It's all noise. It sounds like an even more thrashy and moody Big Black, and that confuses me. Instead of the deep and scratchy voice crooning over layers of atmosphere, I hear hollering about three yalps away from Gibby Hayes's early squeals. It's loud and not textured every song pretty much sounds the same.

The first track of Children of God seems like it could come from Filth, only something is different. There's more there. The sound quality is better. The vocals are the same, only under control. There are layers. Layers! It draws me in.

Jarboe must have brought some magic to the Swans. Suddenly there's really something beautiful here. It's reflective. It's dark. There's space between notes that are filled with feedback and ambient hums, but everything is backed off far enough to really let the band and the singers breathe. And through the ambience comes intensity and beauty.

I can make out the words and I can tell that it's full of thought. Sex, worship, destruction, adoration, malice. Gira shows that he can really pull across a deep, droning bass. At times it's too much for him, but it's great to see it develop in him.

And this is it. This is that link between early Swans - grinding and noisy and destructive, and the Angels of Light - with their layered, poetic, droning and distant reflections of a world that isn't right but isn't wrong