In October, Young God Records was set to release We Rose from Your Bed with the Sun in Our Head—a live document of material from SWANS' promotional tour of its 2010 reunion album, My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky. It still isn't out, so while we're waiting for Godot, here's a recording from SWANS' appearance at last year's Portishead-curated All Tomorrow's Parties festival, I'll Be Your Mirror, at the Paramount Theatre in New Jersey on 1 October 2011.
The recording highlights the often inadequate distinction between Apollonian and Dionysian art. A studio recording is, generally, a wholly different affair to a live concert. A SWANS gig, for instance, is very much a bodily experience. What was touted as the band's final record (two double albums ago now) was somewhat misleadingly given the title Soundtracks for the Blind. «Misleadingly», because live, SWANS make music for the deaf. You don't need to bring your ears; the propulsion of sound reverberates throughout the entire body as the slow, repetitive waves of bass, drums and noise blow against it, giving the molecules that comprise you a healthy old rattle 'n' shake. Forget about discerning words, melody. We're talking primordial soup of vibrating static, everything a painful blur. SWANS live is pure masochistic joy! The spectacle of a possessed M. Gira riding both his band and audience members' demons like a fifth horseman of the apocalypse, astray and AWOL, to wrest any control you might think you had out of your weak, little hands only adds to the gluttonous punishment.
But as has always been the challenge for live albums, they can never convey the experience they attempt to record. Sometimes that's fine. More than a souvenir, the live album can give you an opportunity to hear details you missed the first time around, in all the eardrum shattering hiss. SWANS' last live album, 1997's Swans Are Dead, contained some of the most blissful, cathartically mournful, erotically frightening and finger snapping moments in the band's recorded history.
Toilet Guppies caught SWANS on their recent European tour in Berlin and in Oslo, and can say with some authority (I said «some») that what was a near-transcendental derangement of the senses in a live setting—the sheer volume obliterating the mind/body dualism—comes across as meandering and a little self-indulgent in mp3 format. Too bombastic to be used as background music, but not pummelling enough at 128 kbps through tiny, tinny iPod headphones or speakers to satisfy the average contemporary attention span, this is not a recording anybody is likely to listen to while taking the bus in the morning or doing the dishes in the evening. Nor while they're dancing, fucking or doing drugs, for that matter. Three of these tracks run for about 25 minutes, most of which is taken up by repeated Wagnerian percussive stomps, or cycles of slowly building marching drums. Live, these give rise to fear for your ears, before finally bringing your resistance to your knees. You surf numberless waves of hypnotic, all-enveloping sound until you wake up from a trance, once the music and the pain in your aural orifice has subsided. Sweat trickles out of waxen ears. Taken out of the concert venue and its formidable PA, however, the pieces drag on a bit. The songs are great—the surprisingly funky «Apostate», in particular, shines here—it's just that by the time they're wrapping up the intro, you've been waiting a quarter of an hour. It's like a particularly conscientious lover's never ending foreplay, always promising, but when will they deliver?
On Swans Are Dead, Jarboe's occasional lead vocal duties and funereal organ lent the proceedings much-needed variety, texture and, dare I say, femininity. There is no such respite on these recordings from the phallic three-guitar, one-bass, two-prong percussion attack. The pieces become much of a muchness, really, bleeding over into one another. Everything has that same structure, always cranked up to eleven, innit?
The above download, then, is mostly a souvenir for those who have witnessed the real thing, or else a curious document for those eager to eavesdrop on the process leading up to the already-recorded, but yet-to-be released follow-up to My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky. This recording was originally uploaded by NPR as one long 128 kbps mp3 file some time ago. I've split the file into individual tracks. A no doubt far superior live document—mixed and mastered, without the glitches, culled from a multitude of concerts and in lossless quality—is set for release four months ago, and should be available in our lifetime. Sign up to Young God Records' mailing list for a notification upon its release.
For more of the same, but in far superior sound quality (at once far more compelling) and with admonitions to the Spanish people to overthrow their government, download a couple of songs performed by SWANS at Barcelona's Primavera Sound festival last May (care of WFMU and Free Music Archive):
Ah, Berlin! What mistress are you! This shall be Toilet Guppies' first winter in the world capital of contemptorary art. (Next to its old nemesis, New York, of course.) A city where salaries are insults added to the injury of already ripe unemployment, but where alcohol is cheap. The ramshackle hedonism, tottering beneath the myths of the Weimar Republic, is wrapped in socially acceptable left wing politics (coming in whatever shape or form leftist radicals may afford), all of it housed by rather unsightly new buildings where the destructive determination of mankind has obliterated the old, as well as old buildings that remain pocked with little bullet hole reminders. This does not intimidate the ambitious bohemian. Every day a new arrival, like so many actress-waitresses flocking to LA… Dare any of us imagine what winter shall bring?
To soften the arrival of snow and below -15 degrees in such a place, Toilet Guppies submits a guppy from way down the toilet: a 1996, since-deleted German language rendition of SWANS' «Helpless Child».
When Michael Gira decided to kill off SWANS (long before their presently ongoing reunion), the band's corpse bloated into the two-disc swan song Soundtracks for the Blind, perhaps the best summary of the varied forms of the band's ethos and aesthetic on any one album. Old loops, found sounds, various live recordings and both new and old studio ones were all jabbed, stomped and stroked into a whole (or hole, whichever you prefer).
As if the resulting two hours and twenty minutes' worth of music didn't suffice, the band also issued a 51-minute «EP» of alternate versions, «Die Tür ist zu». As the Teutonic title—«the door is closed»—indicates, two of the tracks were German versions of songs off Soundtracks for the Blind. Presumably, this was a final gesture of gratitude aimed at the band's German fan base, who absolutely loathed it, cringing at the ham-fisted American accent singing words that may sound cool in exotic English but that, they were quick to realise, aren't exactly Goethe or Rilke in German.
But though the «EP»'s opening piece, «Helpless Child», features one of the least accomplished lyrics by one of rock's most unique and underappreciated wordsmiths, the music still contains one of the most sublime expressions of the band's transgressive-transcendent, Wagnerian excess, combining as it does funereal organs with brute repetition, its third movement building towards a climax that—live, at least—obliterates any sense of the body and isolates the mind in sorrow indistinguishable from joy, elation from heaviness, and the rest of it. More clearly than most of SWANS' output, it encapsulates the band's attempt at unifying opposites into one liberating whole, taking the contradictions, paradoxes and tensions of human logic, feelings and sense experience and accepting that they aren't, in fact, real, except as a totality. One in which, incidentally, you are swallowed up, momentarily relieving you of the feeling of being a separate entity, no longer an ego kicking against the will of the world.
Or something. «Helpless Child» (or «Hilflos Kind» in German) is prefixed with one of Soundtracks for the Blind's ambient noise instrumentals, «I Love You This Much» (re-Christened «Ligetí's Breath»), and so is not merely a German language rendition of the version on Soundtracks for the Blind, but an extended opus. (You know, if you needed a further incentive to download the track…)
I'd include the German version of «I See Them All Lined Up», too, but I'll save that for the day when I'm more in the mood for lyrics like: «I see their bodies in the pyre / leaking black smoke into the flames / And all the people stand around / shaping lips into my name». In German.
«Die Tür ist zu» is out of print, but Soundtracks for the Blind is still very much available, and Toilet Guppies very highly recommends that you part with money for it at the first given opportunity.
For anyone in Oslo this weekend, Toilet Guppies has two spare tickets to the SWANS gig on Friday (6 May), to be given away for free to the first man, woman, beast or child to claim them.
If the transcendent din, so loud it might make you forget who and where you are, of Michael Gira's curious brand of oddly disciplined, yet excessive and decidedly perverse derangement isn't your cup of tea, note that James Blackshaw plays support. I'm loath to use adjectives such as «meditative» and most of all «magical», but Blackshaw's delicate, ever-ascending blend of instrumental bluegrass and classical guitar actually qualifies. You will be transfixed. For a little taste, download the above mp3s, recorded live in studio for NPR a couple of years ago. Just know that he exerts a far more mesmerising effect live.
And afterwards, SWANS will give you the greatest release this side of sex.
Send Toilet Guppies an email to claim one or both tickets.
Recently, one of my superiors—best known for writing and singing songs for a kids' TV show that proved more popular with speed freak inmates in the capital's gaol than with the children of the nation—told me to compile a CD-R of the music most important to me. I don't know why. Presumably my mind and body for eight hours a day isn't enough; she wants my soul, too.
It was a ridiculous task. There are far too many excellent recordings in the world, all of them impossible to quantify or rate, to select a paltry 74 minutes' worth. In the end, a not very short shortlist had to be brutally whittled down to its bare essentials and, after a series of unhappy compromises, the entire thing was sequenced by hitting the «Random» button. (To reflect the unpredictability of day-to-day mood swings, y'unnerstand.)
Anyway, I thought I'd upload the compilation here because, well, though there's more music I'd recommend, there isn't music I'd recommend more. And this is a music blog.
Feel free to upload and email Toilet Guppiesyour compilation of absolutely unmissable essentials. Anyone who submits an mp3 album of their ultimate favourites (totalling no more than 100MB, please) shall receive a reading, consisting of a detailed analysis of their personality and predictions for the future, entirely for free. The person with the most moving/impressive/confounding/unsettling or unintentionally funny compilation shall win two tickets to see SWANS in Oslo, Norway on 6 May 2011.
Toilet Guppies returns on a Sunday with another installment in a series closely scrutinising feelings of love in modern song. This time, it's the turn of songwriter Michael Gira's vehicle the Angels Of Light:
The narrator in «Evangeline» doesn't promise the object of his desire anything; doesn't proclaim lofty ideals, intentions, feelings. And the lyrics don't offer any short and sweet couplets that easily lend themselves to being quoted by people in love—nor is the word «love» (or any of its literary surrogates, such as «heart») ever mentioned in them. Yet «Evangeline» may be the ultimate love song.
For years this was simply a beautiful piece of music to me, a vague rather than subtle love song, so deceptively unassuming is the sentiment contained in the lyrics. But when all the clichés have been expressed, yet again, in lists of reasons for loving whoever it is you love, and you have announced to your lover or to the world just how they make you feel, there is something that remains. Something that—provided your dedicated affection is true—no word will ever be able to capture or convey. This is the essence of what you're feeling, and the only thing words can do is to surround and close in on it, letting you follow the progress of sentences as they lead you, as if into a spiral, towards the ineffable. Then, just as you're there, the words let go and the grasp you thought you had dissolves with your focus, and the feelings return to a state of warm fuzziness enveloping your consciousness, yet never penetrating it. But for a moment, at least, you were closer.
And to do that you need words less loaded, overly used or distracting than the familiar, four-letter L- and H-words. You need words such as these, capturing not the feelings felt but describing the situation in which they arise. Did you ever watch on as your lover slept?
There's a silver stream laid across the sky And this city lifts up its arms to it As I wait for you, Evangeline Yes, my eyes have seen your unselfishness And my fingers touched your two sleeping lips As the echoes passed just above our heads As the city flashed just beneath the clouds That concealed the stars and reflected sound But protected us from an emptiness And then drifted down in a diamond mist As I watched you breathe, as I watched you dream Evangeline
And your tenderness and your innocence You were far away with your secret bliss You were far away with your perfect god You were far away in a silent field Where the yellow dust traced your naked skin Where the gentle flame kissed your hollow lung Evangeline Like an acid stream Evangeline Like a shining vein Evangeline With your moonlight chain Evangeline With your open gate Evangeline With your steel door dreams Evangeline
I can feel it now Feel it now
Then it's gone
With this song, M. Gira proves that it's only by saying nothing that you can say everything about something. It's one of few love songs that don't stoop to expressing the inexpressible, but rather set the scene for the unutterable to play out. Perhaps only fools rush in, but at least this romantic doesn't make even more of a fool of himself by chasing the ineffable with words that can never deliver what they're meant to mean.
And on that note.
[A hi-fi studio version of «Evangeline» can be purchased on the exquisite Angels Of Light albumHow I Loved You.]
Michael Gira—enfant terrible of Americana, big cheese over at Young God Records and the artist Toilet Guppies hates to love, but nevertheless loves more than any other artist—once put his own pinkie finger up for sale on SWANS' website (for U$D20,000, I believe), in order to finance his work. Surprisingly, there were no takers.
Now the man has announced that he is «reactivating» SWANS. (Just don't call it a reunion!) SWANS or no SWANS, Gira is in the process of making a new album, which is always an event to look forward to with what we in Norwegian call «skrekkblandet fryd.» (Something like «horror-infused glee.») And underappreciated artist that he is, Gira needs financial backing. This time around, he has adopted a more realistic (and dare I say, sober) financing strategy than parting with bits of the body that won't detach by themselves unless you have leprosy:
On his website, Gira is currently offering several packages, ranging from purchasing a limited edition demo CD/live double DVD bundle to being a general patron of the arts. For U$D100 or more you can even be credited as «executive producer» of the forthcoming SWANS release, ha ha! (I suppose it's a North American thing to always give something specific in return for money or generosity. A pragmatic mindset, like that time the renegade French mime Philippe Petit breathtakingly tightrope-danced between the Twin Towers, 417 metres up in the sky, and all the Americans could do (besides arresting him) was ask, «Why?»)
I know what you're thinking: «Whatever happened to the anonymous benefactor?» But the ridiculous executive production credit and even the forthcoming SWANS release aren't really relevant here. After a three- or four-album long sojourn into lush and gorgeous, romantic territory that was genuinely uplifting, with his last album Gira returned to music that will uproot the rot embedded in your heart, dangling it in yer face to show you that the pus, death and funky gunk dripping from it will never stop oozing, much like the never-ending «black river» of his song of the same name. Moreover, he’s the only artist who is able, or at least willing to do that. You won’t get that even from Diamanda Galás, Leonard Cohen or Nico.
As well as being a transcendent performer, Gira is a uniquely fearless singer-songwriter and author with a penetrating perspective all his own, so anything that contributes to his further productivity is well worth the patronage. History will thank you. In the more short-term, Gira's stubbornly uncompromising, never-repetitive and intense nature ensures it's an investment you won't regret—provided you have discerning taste and you stick around long enough to hear his next record, or to catch him playing live somewhere.
(Not included in the price is the counselling you obviously need if you identify with Gira's art, or being insulted by him at one of his concerts for apparently no other reason than wearing a T-shirt not to his liking. To be on the safe side, sport a reproduction «vintage» SWANS Filth shirt, like Devendra Banhart in Rolling Stone Magazine or Pitchfork or something.)
In any case, as your blogger, I advise you to forget whatever mp3 album, CD, book, DVD or art investment you're currently considering splashing out on, and to go for something that is as true and direct as you can possibly get from a cultural product. You won't find the limited edition CD currently for sale at Gira's website shared on this blog once the 1,000 copies sell out, so do yourself a favour and at the very least get that. Trust me, the song «Little Mouth» alone is worth it…
Today's the day Barack Obama, as we speak, is being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize here in Oslo. Now, I appreciate that when you govern the most powerful nation on the planet you can hardly afford to be a tree-hugging surrender monkey, but you'd be hard pressed not to see, not so much the irony as the logical contradiction in what basically amounts to a warlord being celebrated for contributions to world peace. (Something not lost on the US Commander in Chief himself.) And though Obama is hardly an Alexander the Great or a Napoleon, as 30,000 further troops are sent to Afghanistan and the US military presence in South America and Africa is escalated, I was reminded of some lines out of a song: «please remember as you kill us and cut us down / That time will not wash clean the bloody face of history / And someone will breathe here again and they will hate you for what you leave…»
And so it is to trusty Toilet Guppies faves Michael Gira and Akron/Family that we go, with live-in-studio recordings made on David Garland's show on New York radio station WNYC, Spinning On Air. Akron/Family's set was broadcast on 25 September 2005, Angels Of Light/Michael Gira later that year, on 23 October. For those not familiar with the artists, in 2005 Akron/Family—then a quartet—served as Michael Gira's backing band, together making up the vehicle for Gira's songs, the Angels Of Light. On tour Akron/Family would warm up for, then sit in with the Angels Of Light.
I once had the perverse delight of catching the Akron/Family/Angels Of Light line-up live, with the 50-something rehabilitated hippie and punk M. Gira riding the 20-something, frightened freak folkies like a horseman of the apocalypse. There he was, spitting and stomping, shouting at the bewildered young hippies as they tried to keep up with Gira's exorcism of all kinds of lugubrious little demons. With the band finally hammering out the minimalist riffs and noise with all their energy, Gira still seemed to demand more, always more, until the freaked-out drummer's eyes seemed to protest—impotently—that he was already beating the drums as hard as he could. Even so, Gira still managed to coax more out of him; a second sound that couldn't be heard but was evident to anyone in the room who could see the confused look in the skinsman's eyes, like a man who'd never known what depravity he was actually capable of, scared witless at finally being presented face to face with his own surprising actions and inner, unknown nature.
That's Gira; while Nick Cave always does that same, routine kick at exactly the same mark during «Red Right Hand», every time, like a less nimble and funky James Brown intent on entertaining your ass, Gira doesn't put on a show. He's in it for the catharsis and the transcendence and the spit and the rumble of soundwaves crashing onto your helpless body, losing himself in lust and violence and the Holy Spirit or whatnot, expecting no less of those given the task of backing him up. And so he whips them, not so much into a frenzy as into submission, until they don't dare but deliver what we're all there for, anyway. He rips their youthful souls out of their bodies and makes them dance! Pure S&M.
That's not in evidence on these recordings, which focus more on the country stylings and balladry, like the cover of Bob Dylan's «I Pity the Poor Immigrant» and Gira's maudlin, but warm and uplifting homage to Johnny Cash, «On the Mountain» (a.k.a. «Let It Be You»). «To Live through Someone», too, is sentimental in its daydreaming reference to war «heroes» and the deceased walking on roses up in the skies above, but Gira reins himself in with a wordless twist at the end.
These radio performances certainly are schweet, but the sound quality isn't nearly as good as on the official releases, all of which are available on Young God Records if you like what you hear. And if you do, you'll love those records, so get off yer lazy blog-dwelling, freeloading, file sharing bum and spend a little well worth dough for once, over here. You know it's right.
That said, this sampler is justified by those performances that differ from the originals, most notably Gira's solo renditions of «To Live through Someone» and «Promise of Water», and Akron/Family's «Sorrow Boy». (Not to mention their unknown song, never given an official release.) The early sketch of the Angels Of Light's «Not Here/Not Now» is interesting, as is one of Gira's most enduring and most accomplished songs, «Blind», here given a solo acoustic treatment to replace the original's languid, melancholy flow with a less accessible approach, perhaps more fitting, if you consider the inconsolable words.
2 is the B-side of an out-of-print vinyl-only single for «At the Hop».
3 & 4 are from an out-of-print vinyl-only album split between Jana Hunter and Devendra Banhart. (The rest of Banhart's side—radio session takes of «In Golden Empress Hands», «At the Hop» and «We All Know»—can be retrieved here.)
1. M. Gira: «The Sex Machine» (live) From The Somniloquist (2000)
This short story of Michael Gira's may help to explain why Larkin Grimm has referred to him as a «notorious pervert». Recorded live in 1994, during a spoken word tour to promote The Consumer (Gira's by now out-of-print collection of short stories), the author's own biographical introduction to this story gives a glimpse of the idiosyncratic lens through which Gira views things, wherein what is generally considered destructive, immoral or morbid in his eyes becomes positive, rapturous, beautiful. And rightly so.
One of the strengths of Gira's lyrics and prose is his ability to describe something, ecstatically, as if both from the outside and the inside, all at once. An individual really is isolated from the outside world, except in his own imagination, where he can pretend to interact with other minds, rather than just be beheld by them (just as he can only behold them). Gira's literature doesn't pretend to do this—except when the protagonist (usually the narrator) breaks through the barrier by opening the floodgates of violence.
Whenever we're confronted—as we usually are in music and literature—with thoughts, feelings and perspectives overly familiar to us, we easily forget just how unreal these thoughts, feelings and perspectives are. How they're figments of our imagination, naturally abstract and taunted by the truth we're unequipped to ever experience. But when Gira offers us his unique take on things, the sense of reverie is accentuated, even though his vision is no more unreal than those of others. It's just that he doesn't pretend to be anything other than a voyeur steeped in his own fantasies…
And they are delicious fantasies, because they're not about what we'd like to enjoy, but about what our nature dictates that we enjoy.
Oh, how I miss living in Amsterdam!
2. SWANS: «Surrogate Drones/Your Property» (live) From Die Tür ist zu (1996)
«Your Property» first appeared on Cop in 1984, sung by Gira himself:
I give you money You're superior I don't exist You control me You're corrupt You deform me You own me You own me I worship your authority I worship your authority You're deformed You're corrupt You own me You own me
This live version from 1995 is made all the more poignant by the fact that a woman—Gira's main co-conspirator in SWANS, Jarboe—sings it. And by that I mean she channels it, with an authority that's as thrilling as it is frightening, the drums towards the end like so many lashes of the screaming dominatrix's whip. People who claim Jarboe's influence «softened» SWANS don't know what they're on about.
3. SWANS: Title unknown, live
In 1997, after 15 years of kicking against the pricks under the moniker SWANS, Gira decided to disband the group. Not that it had been a band as such—the only permanent members were Gira and Jarboe—but the expectations surrounding the name became a bit of a hindrance, apparently. Gira's next project, The Body Lovers, continued where SWANS' final studio album, Soundtracks for the Blind, left off: experiments in sound almost cinematic, instead of «bludgeoning slabs of noise» or narrative songs.
In any case, 1997 saw SWANS embark on a final tour, during which they played this track. A new song, performed on the farewell tour and since then discarded, it would seem, I don't know the title of it. This particular recording was made in Trondheim, which I recall as the most transcendental experience I've ever had at a concert. The volume was staggering, of course, and I hadn't slept much for days. I kept nodding off in my seat next to the soundboard, frequently waking up to the sound of the same chords, repeated again and again, only with slightly more intensity each time, for what seemed like ages. After a while, the chattering voice that tells you whether you're enjoying yourself or not, or monitors every little trivial piece of related information, fell completely silent, and I no longer recognised any of the songs. I wasn't aware of liking what I heard or not liking it, or even that there was anything to like or not. Sound, of which I wasn't really aware (at least not as an object of reflection), was a physical sensation that my body was seamlessly wrapped in. There was no music, nor a listener.
That wasn't this number. But this one is a gem, and it's a mystery that nothing ever came of it—it wasn't even included on the excellent live document of the tour, the SWANS Are Dead double CD, which, incidentally, comes highly recommended.
4. The Angels Of Light: «God's Servant» From «Praise Your Name» 7" (1999)
After The Body Lovers album, Gira turned to narrative songs again, toning down the metal tendencies and refining the folk elements. «God's Servant» was recorded for the first record under new moniker The Angels Of Light, New Mother, but ended up as a B-side for album single «Praise Your Name».
Not that it's really B-side material. Melody, arrangement and not least lyrics are a highlight in Gira's career:
My body is an infinite number Dissected by perceptions Which are encroaching like pollutions Infecting the nervous system Of the world
It recalls an untitled prose fragment from 1990, which appeared in The World Of Skin's «Mystery of Faith» as a spoken outro (in German!), and later in modified form as a section of one of Gira's Consumer stories:
As I walked the earth was dense and resilient beneath me, with the consistency and feel of a corpse. I realized that with each step my feet pressed down on generation upon generation of my dead ancestors. Their bones, their rotted and transmuted flesh, had become the substance of the earth. In eating the food that had been taken from the ground, I ate their essence—the fertility that survived their decomposition. In this way, they lived through me and in me, as I would in turn live through another person's consumption of food, air, water. Even in breathing I breathed a mixture of the gases their bodies exuded in the process of decomposition, of re-assimilation into the biosphere. I breathed, ate, swallowed, and consumed their souls, everything interconnected, everything feeding on itself, searching, digesting, reiterating, cogitating, chewing, imagining, rejecting, killing, consuming, reproducing, twisting in on itself, dying, decomposing, and being reborn, in an infinite reflection of itself in an absolute absence of conscious perfection. In order to properly see it would be necessary to remove the sight from my eyes. When I had killed my sense of identity I would slip away and enter myself, comprising the entire world, of which I was an integral but unnecessary part.
Similarly, «God's Servant» contains a revery, at once destructive and mystical, of what it would be like to decompose, the part finally reunited with the whole, all recounted in the long, meticulous sentences that Gira has made his specialty:
I travel through space, unconscious Protected inside your mouth Floating like an acid vapor Suspended above the dry land Dissolving like an injection Spilling through the crystal earth Of your veins Infecting the cold, blue waters Of your eyes
5. Michael Gira with guests: «Waiting Beside Viragio» (live) From Benefit CD—Jarboe Emergency Medical Fund (1999)
Jarboe had an accident during a trip to Israel, and the hospital bill required a fundraiser. Michael Gira and some of the musicians used in the Angels Of Light project played a gig at New York's Bowery Ballroom, further raising funds by selling a limited edition CD of the recording.
One of the songs performed was new composition «Waiting Beside Viragio», later to be released as a demo remixed by Windsor For The Derby's Dan Matz on Matz's and Gira's collaborative effort, What We Did. That version is completely different, and this majestic live performance more than hints at what could have been.
6. Michael Gira: «Beautiful One» (live) From Benefit CD—Jarboe Emergency Medical Fund (1999)
A few of the new songs performed at the Jarboe benefit concert never appeared on subsequent Angels Of Light studio albums, the best of which was this tender song of regret. A song that would have fit in perfectly on the Angels Of Light's next record, break-up album How I Loved You.
7. Michael Gira: «Kosinsky» From Solo Recordings at Home (2001)
A perpetually underappreciated artist, Gira needs to come up with schemes to finance his rather extravagant recordings under The Angels Of Light moniker. In 2001, he released a limited edition CD of home recordings, the proceeds of which would go to recording many of these songs in the studio, with full band. Paradoxically, Gira has stated that these home recordings often contain an energy and an immediacy lost in the studio.
Inspired by the voyeurism of author Jerzy Kosinski, this song is a study in perving and peeping—at least, that's what those who claim they don't like to watch call it. But hardly anyone conveys the joy of seeing as well as Gira.
8. Michael Gira: «Nations» (live) From Living '02 (2002)
In later years, Gira has increasingly taken to performing solo live. These performances, stripped of the almost mind-altering decibel levels of SWANS, are often more intense (at least emotionally), Gira's unique ability to channel angels and demons as he spits and stomps a spectacle nothing short of hypnotic.
9. The Angels Of Light: «On the Mountain (Looking Down)» (live) From We Were Alive!!! (2002)
Another excellent song that never ended up on any official release, «On the Mountain» appeared on Solo Recordings at Home, Living '02—both as acoustic solo renditions—and on this, a live Angels Of Light album, again sold in a limited edition to make money for further studio recordings. After appearing on all these CDs meant to finance Angels Of Light albums, nothing came of the song.
Still, this live band version captures the mania and spitting rage Gira can conjure…. Here are some audiovisuals for you, from what I believe is the same gig as the above recording:
10. Michael Gira: «My Sister Said» From I Am Singing to You from My Room (2004)
I Am Singing to You from My Room was another limited edition CD of home recordings released to help finance Angels Of Light studio recordings. A remnant of his earlier proclivity for vengeance, «My Sister Said» is a less personal (or at least less biographical) tale of revenge, sadder and more tender than previous revenge songs (which were hate songs, really). This isn't a hate song, but an outline of a tragedy:
Thinking, dreaming, of how certain behavior patterns might be passed from one generation to another, wondering where and if free choice enters into it—I spun out a tale with that in mind, and it grew naturally of its own volition. Hopefully, there's no editorial point of view implied here. It's just a song/story, for god's sake.
11. The Angels Of Light: «Destroyer» (live on WNYC) Since «disbanding» SWANS, Gira has diversified and begun releasing other artists on his Young God Records label (most famously Devendra Banhart). One of his discoveries was hyperactive hippie prog rockers Akron/Family, who started acting as Gira's backing band in the Angels Of Light—as on this song, evoking Kali as a principle of revenge in connection with the war in Iraq. This live recording, broadcast on WNYC's Spinning On Air, shows how the youthful bearded ones injected the Angels Of Light with a fresh, spiritual quality, as they sing harmony and bang that tambourine.
12. Michael Gira: «Promise of Water» From Songs for a Dog (2006)
2007 saw the release of We Are Him, an Angels Of Light album that occasionally seemed to point back towards a time when SWANS were releasing bleak and heavy albums full of virulent rage. Trying to get away from precisely that, with Akron/Family the Angels Of Light sometimes eschewed drums altogether; now Gira's speaking of reuniting SWANS, presumably for some orgiastic, ear-splitting excess.
This song, recorded solo especially for limited edition, vinyl-only release Songs for a Dog, illustrates why Gira doesn't need to rely on volume for intensity. If still in doubt, check out this video, where, rather fittingly, Gira performs the above song in a public toilet. (As the man himself says, «I play in a bathroom all the time, just not music.»):
(Get the full band version of this song on We Are Him.)
Ever since Kant and the Enlightenment (no, that's not a band, it's a philosopher and a scientific movement) the concept of «genius» has been linked to that of «originality». This has resulted—together with the development of democracy and increased socio-economic equality that have enabled more people to «realise» themselves—in an epidemic of mediocre or talentless people who want to be involved in something «creative», doing things no one's ever done before (often with good reason) and calling that «art». This because many don't understand that there's more to the unique vision crucial to genius than mere originality.
Michael Gira, for instance, is an innovator. He used to be a pioneer of industrial music, and kind of like Bob Dylan is credited with introducing poetry into rock'n'roll, Gira may be credited with being one of the first to introduce intense self-loathing and alienation into the genre (by far outdoing the punks' contrived and polemic alienation), thus spawning an army of angst-ridden adolescents writing embarrassingly exaggerated and self-indulgent lyrics in the 1990s (Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, et al.—thanks a lot, Michael Gira!). But these grunge and alt. rock artistes naturally only misunderstood what SWANS were about, taking the noise and the awkward, heavy handed imagery and leaving the quest for transcendence. Blinded by the obvious attributes of his art, they lost sight of both the subtleties and the very core.
In any case, it's not Gira's innovations that qualify him as a genius. (Although that certainly contributes to his unique vision.) There's also his intensity of vision. It's uncompromising, unflinching and penetrating, which has enabled him to see (and convey) things, perspectives or angles no other artist who comes to mind has tried, let alone managed to do. This helps explain how he can be called a genius—as if that's terribly important—even now that his innovations and experiments seem less radical (on the face of it, at least).
You could even argue that he didn't actually qualify as a genius until he graduated from that tentative quest to attain something very few artists seek, especially in popular music, namely truth. His vision wasn't lucid enough, as he used early SWANS to bludgeon us with his warped emotional state, unique but utterly fucked. It was, perhaps, more cathartic than edifying.
Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and now Nick Cave are all generally touted as songwriting geniuses, but only occasionally can they be said to be tailing truth. Perhaps hampered by their skill and blinded by the beauty of their creations, their manipulative love songs (designed, no doubt, to win them some pussy) betrays an insincerity that is absent from Gira's work. Gira doesn't possess the same skill, as far as formal structure is concerned, as a Dylan. But he compensates for this by bringing to the table both a sincerity and a perspective all his own, both of which deal with issues and emotions Cohen, Dylan, Cave, et al. are rarely willing, able or interested in pursuing. Dylan, Cohen and Cave don't really convey unique perspectives; it is their eloquence that is unique. They fall within the romantic tradition of The Poet; Gira doesn't really fall within a tradition. He should've been a High Art gallery artiste (like a Viennese Aktionist or some transgressive performance artist), but he happens to be equipped with an acoustic guitar and words to infect your eyes instead.
The Fall are my favourite band. I also hate my favourite band. With a passion… I vow never to go to another Fall show and yet somehow always end up at the next one. I am sick.
So says Julian Cope, and the way he feels about Mark E. Smith's legendary outfit, I feel about M. Gira.
Michael Rolfe Gira was born in Los Angeles in 1954. In the early '80s he formed seminal New York industrial act SWANS, which he disbanded in 1997 in favour of new projects Angels Of Light, the Body Lovers and various solo endeavours. He is also the author of a collection of short stories, The Consumer, and head of record label Young God Records.
There's a vast amount of rare material by M. Gira floating about (seeing as he's disowned a lot of it, electing never to re-release it), and a lot of it bears the unique quality stamp familiar to fans of Gira. So here you go: an introduction to Michael R. Gira, by way of discontinued rarities:
1982. Ex-hippie and kind-of punk Michael Gira has moved from LA to New York upon seeing the squalor, violence and abject loneliness portrayed in Taxi Driver. He's already left the New Wave-y, synth-heavy post-punk band Circus Mort, and is just edging towards more uncompromising things. His new group, SWANS, share a rehearsal space and go on tour with Sonic Youth, who at the time are still dabbling with chaos and risk. Apparently, on tour SWANS founding members Michael Gira and Jonathan Kane frequently make attempts on each others' lives, trying to strangle each other in the back of the van over cigarettes and the like, one of the things that would leave Sonic Youth wary and a little scared of the intense other band. According to Gira, upon returning to New York from a disastrous tour with virtually no audiences—the «Savage Blunder Tour»—everyone absolutely hates each other. Sonic Youth go on to become the family values indie rock royalty currently distributing their latest CD exclusively at Starbucks; Michael Gira remains largely marginalised, a legend to a relatively few, dysfunctional people (who probably don't frequent Starbucks too often).
But in 1982 both bands are unknowns, with members of both playing for some of the key artists at the time, viz. «symphonic» guitar noise composer Glenn Branca and the agitational head of the New York No Wave scene, Lydia Lunch.
In recent years, Souljazz Records have offered retrospectives of that time and place with their New York Noise compilation series, but like always with Souljazz, their focus is on the music they like, not what was most interesting to the players and audiences at the time, and so their primers are more geared towards that place where punk and disco converged, rather than on the abrasive assaults of sound perpetrated by the likes of Lydia Lunch's Teenage Jesus & the Jerks and, at the time, Sonic Youth and SWANS.
This early output of both latter bands can easily be dated to the early '80s. Although not derivative, you can hear in them the signature sound of more dancy Manchester bands like Joy Division and the Fall. «Speak»—the opening track on SWANS' debut EP (since discontinued by Gira himself)—is as good as post-punk gets. Punchy and gutsy, you can still almost dance to it—although Gira quickly saw to that.
The next few years' albums and EPs would consist of grindingly bludgeoning industrial music, full of manipulated tape loops, macho drumming and testosterone yells, the minimalitically short slogan-like lyrics usually dealing in self-loathing, alienation and violence, with masochism and prostitution as frequent metaphors for work. (Sample lyrics: «Flex your muscles / Be hard / Come back for more».) One typical song from this period bears the title «Raping a Slave». (After a while, it gets a bit comic book-like, not to mention comical.)
2. Michael Gira: «Game» From Giorno Poetry Systems compilation A Diamond Hidden in the Mouth of a Corpse (1985)
Although Gira is famed for what is typically referred to as «slabs of noise» that «grind» and «bludgeon», his work always displayed a literary interest. While SWANS' early lyrics attempted to duplicate the economic style of marketing (by using slogan-like sentences with only three-to-five words), Gira also started penning short stories, most of which weren't published until 1994. These stories were low on plot, contained mostly two characters (one an extreme sadist, the other either a victim or extreme masochist), and displayed an indulgence in a rich, descriptive vocabulary that Gira wouldn't permit himself in his lyrics at the time.
The first spoken word piece of Gira's that I know of was released on a long-unavailable compilation assembled by Warhol protégé John Giorno, author of The Suicide Sutra and known for his collaborations with William S. Burroughs, and (wrongly) credited with inventing spoken word as a genre. In New York in the '70s and '80s, Giorno engineered a series of albums compiling the readings of various authors and rock personas, releasing, in 1985, this short recitation by Gira. The story itself is pretty disgusting, but Gira's lightless, incantatory delivery manages to make it even bleaker.
The imagery of evisceration in «Game» is surely inspired by Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch, one of the founders of Viennese Actionism, an art movement wherein obsessions with Freud, Catholicism, pagan rituals and modern medicine all come together in a mess of body fluids, body parts, crucifixions, violence and resurrection. Apart from painting in blood, Nitsch is famous for his Orgies-Mysteries Theatre—performances wherein spectators are encouraged to take leave of their senses and become participants themselves, as the beautiful, young actors, smiling and decked out all in white, butcher animals and handle entrails, blood and semen, eviscerating pigs, lambs and oxen just as swans drink out of pools of blood, creating aesthetic tableaux beautifying the horror of death, before the whole ordeal celebrates life with the eating of the animals at a feast towards the end. Gira attended one such happening by Nitsch in New York, and references to other Actionists crop up in his songs.
But Gira transposes this transcendence in the face of evisceration, from the implicit, vicarious thrill of witnessing the destruction of animals, to an explicit, imagined experience of being destroyed yourself. Gira's obsession with the body is a wish to transcend it, violence conceived of as the only means to overcome the divide that separates individuals from each other. The detailed description of pain and cruelty is linked with love, taken to its ultimate, logical conclusion—if by «love» you mean the desire to transcend your own body and being by merging with another. This in turn is infused and confused with loathing, which has as its source the self-hatred that compels the narrator to seek the transcendence-as-escape from himself in the first place. This short snippet of a «story», then, is the point at which the positive urge of love and the negative desire for self-destruction converge. The self is just isolation, and the only remedy or escape into freedom is through an evisceration of the body. Told from a psychotically, almost psychedelically masochistic vantage point, cannibalism, too, would prove a recurring theme in Gira's work.
As a minor, Gira was arrested for possession of hash in Israel and put in a prison for adults. A relatively effeminate boy among confined, hardened men completely separated from women, Gira was protected by certain adult inmates and lucky enough to only have to witness the nightly gang rape of a young man. It was in this environment, in the prison's library, apparently, that Gira first discovered the writings of the Marquis de Sade. Talk about formative experience.
Now, where de Sade shows his reader the joy of power and of inflicting hurt upon others, Gira is more concerned with overcoming the limitations set upon the self by the mind and body, as if the years and years of excessive use since childhood of TV, LSD, amphetamine and alcohol caused a tear in whatever it is that separates the individual mind from the collective consciousness, allowing him to catch a glimpse of freedom and release in the violence that destroys you—you, who are the very boundary that isolates you from everything else—making you feel (and so causing a heightened awareness of self) just as it eradicates that self, the will of the individual helplessly, powerlessly submitting to the will of another, therefore no longer putting up a resistance to the outside world but yielding to it, surrendering to it and becoming one with it, the boundaries separating the individual from everything—the fragment from the whole—finally torn down in one big, foul and stinking mess of ectstatic agony. I suppose.
3. SWANS: «Coward» (live) From Public Castration Is a Good Idea (1986)
While Joy Division morphed into the '80s dance extravaganza that is New Order, legend would have it that Michael Gira started assaulting audience members who dared to attempt as much as a tiny pogo. With the supposedly rebellious punk movement stagnating into a formula, Gira truculently defied «the conservative notion that three chords were somehow necessary.» And the exceptionally high volume and noisy arrangements were, apparently, designed to obliterate Gira's perpetual sensitivity to the heaviness of his own body (an after effect of frequent, adolescent use of LSD). Thus Gira has often said that he felt SWANS' music (such as «Coward», taken from the out-of-print live album Public Castration Is a Good Idea) was actually elating. The key to understanding Sonic Youth's music, too, lies in their insistance that noise is liberating—although Sonic Youth never penned such oppressive lyrics as those of «Coward»:
I'm a coward Put your knife in me Walk away Walk away Walk away I don't know you: I can't use you I don't know you: I can't use you Put your knife in me Put your knife in me I love you I'm worthless Put your knife in me Walk away I'm worthless I love you I'm worthless I love you I'm worthless Worthless
These lyrics, so loathsome, nevertheless perfectly convey the simple, repetitious and obsessive psychology of low self-esteem, to an almost unbearable degree. Listening to the song is akin to being locked in with a horrendous smell. That insufferable feeling is only released by the moments where the band seem to almost lose the stifling control they exert in playing this drudgery. Live footage from the period shows Gira rhythmically, steadily stretching and bending his body, as in a Reichian breathing exercise, contorting his body in stabbing motions to the point of trance.
Whatever the faults or merits of Gira's mid-'80s output, no one did anything like it, and this is the period that made his name (and for which Gira's still notorious)—although, needless to say, no one's ever tried to emulate it.
With these releases, Gira signed up to a tradition in music that is fairly new—one that is at odds with the campfires and parties where music, joyous or comforting, was born and is nurtured to this day. A tradition made up of a minority of musicians who are concerned with creating tension, by confronting, challenging, provoking or attacking the listener. (Even punk, however raucous, was essentially party music, falling within the confines of rock'n'roll, and so was in fact a very sociable expression, rather than the anti-social menace demonisation by the conservatives and hype by the punks have made it out to be.)
In the late 1800s/early 1900s, classical composers (Scriabin, Debussy, Stravinsky, Schönberg, Bartók, Prokofiev, Varèse, Ives, et al.) started experimenting with atonal music; later composers (Cage, Reich, Riley, Young, Flynt, et al.) experimented with noise. The first industrial outfits, such as Throbbing Gristle, went all out and challenged the pain threshold of anyone not entirely deaf—as did contemporaries of SWANS in London (the Birthday Party) and Berlin (Einstürzende Neubauten). As such, the music is interesting. But «interesting» doesn't necessarily make for a rewarding experience, and as Throbbing Gristle, the Birthday Party, Einstürzende Neubauten, Lydia Lunch and SWANS were all involved in stage antics—various levels of scandalous transgression, or even outright violence (which perhaps can be traced back to Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty)—listening to an mp3 30 years on may be a bit inadequate and one-dimensional.
Still, those interested in SWANS' most obviously extreme art should go here and here.
4. SWANS: «Trust Me» (live on Brave New Waves) From a Canadian radio broadcast (1987)
Gradually, SWANS started moving away from heavy noise to more melody- and narrative-oriented songs. Although the lyrics display the usual minimalism and repetition, this acoustic radio performance of just Michael Gira (vocals and guitar) and long-standing SWANS member Norman Westberg (lead guitar) marks a shift in priorities.
The best thing about this song are the words, putting a new, no-nonsense spin on the eternal love song, their truth making a mockery of all the lovers in your life who spoke too soon:
Because I love you I give you this Don't be afraid of this You can trust me now Though we will deceive ourselves You can trust me now You can trust me now Don't be afraid of this It's not unusual It's not unusual Because I love you You can trust me now You will never know You will never know You can not trust me now Don't be afraid of this You can trust me now It's not unusual You can not trust me now You will never know It's not unusual It's not unusual
5. SWANS: «Let It Come Down» From The Burning World (1989)
Paul Bowles' psychological novel Let It Come Down starts off with the following quote from Shakespeare's Macbeth:
BANQUO It will be rain tonight.
FIRST MURDERER
Let it come down.
TheMURDERERSattackBANQUO
There lies in this challenge a devil-may-care, fuck-it-all attitude that can easily be confused with indifference or self-destruction, but is in fact a wish to truly interact with the world, whatever the consequences. Life or death, you only ever have reality to fall back on, anyway, and nowhere else to go.
In 1986, performance artist and SWANS fan Jarboe had joined the band, and would become the only other constant member of SWANS, alongside husband-to-be Michael Gira, until their partnership's dissolution in 1997. In the still industrial phase of SWANS, Jarboe had played the sampler; beginning with the albums Children of God (credited to SWANS), Blood, Women, Roses and Shame, Humility, Revenge (both credited to Skin), Jarboe's schooling in music was utilised to form what resembled song structures, with Jarboe also taking on piano, keyboard and vocal duties. By 1989's The Burning World, SWANS were actually performing fully fledged songs, replete with verse-chorus arrangements and acoustic intruments.
(For the remarkable Children of God and Skin albums, all in one package, go here.)
6. SWANS: «Saved» From The Burning World (1989)
When Michael Gira disbanded SWANS in 1997, he oversaw the revisionist history of the group, re-releasing only parts of the back catalogue and leaving the rest to whither with the crumbling original copies. One retrospective compilation to appear on Gira's own Young God Records, for instance, wasn't given the title Best of SWANS 1988-1992, (or some such thing) but Various Failures (1988-1992). This is a track that didn't make it onto that collection.
Maybe because it's not a failure. The case can be made that «Saved» is one of the better songs of the period. At least in terms of production values it's aged better than many other SWANS songs. It was even issued as a single at the time, to promote the now out-of-print Burning World album. Both words and melody being a crack, letting some light into SWANS' otherwise uncompromisngly bleak universe, «Saved» remains one of my favourite SWANS tracks, its lyrics managing a balance between the morose and the blue-eyed, remaining deeply felt without resorting to sentimentality.
«Sentimental»—coming as it does from the root word «sentiment»—has usurped our concept of emotion to such a degree that the film voted the all-time greatest on the Internet Movie Database is Shawshank Redemption. Seeing as that film doesn't have the biggest stars, the cleverest plot or dialogue, a truthfully profound message, a great score, any exceptionally impressive acting, any out-of-the-ordinary cinematography, or any tits, car chases or explosions whatsoever, the only possible reason left for its wide popularity has to be the motivational triumph-of-the-human-spirit feelgood angle. Sentimental dopes on the run from reality love that shit. So, beset on all sides on the radio, Internet and in cinemas by sentimental expressions that are embraced as deep truths, it's a relief whenever you find one of those rare artistic products that manage to inspire hope or gratitude without resorting to clichéd lies tapping right into your wishful thinking:
When sunlight falls on your shoulder You look like a creature from Heaven You're holy when you open your eyes And look up inside that sheltering sky And you're an angel, I'll never betray you But I'll always be a lonely child Still I'm saved I'm saved I don't deserve it But I'm saved
7. The World Of Skin: «A Parasite and Other Memories» From Ten Songs for Another World (1990)
In 1990, Gira and Jarboe released an album not under the SWANS or Skin monikers, but as the World Of Skin. Supposedly, this was to mark the album (Ten Songs for Another World) off as a different musical endeavour to previous projects—although in retrospect it's hard to see a marked difference from their other releases of the same period.
As for this song, I don't know which «parasite» it is that Gira is remembering, but to this blogger it always evokes images of a Trent Reznor or Marilyn Manson:
And you who were so careful Not to every really cross the line Your violence was insipid And your bliss, it was plagiarized
Could be any faux-rebellious frontman poseur, really. Close your eyes and throw a rock…
8. The World Of Skin: «I'll Go There, Take Me Home» From Ten Songs for Another World (1990)
With the lyrics almost childishly bitter, it's understandable why this didn't make the cut when Gira assembled Various Failures. Still, there are flashes of brilliance. Who but Gira could pen the last lines, giving suicide the air of a mystical act?
When the poison earth dies Then where will our memory be? I will go there, take me home Take me home, take me home
9. The World Of Skin: «You'll Never Forget» From Ten Songs for Another World (1990)
I'll leave it up to you to decide whether the most unsettling aspect of this song is how elaborately hateful the lyrics are, or simply Michael Gira's controlled/restrained delivery of them, singing in a manner that perhaps would be best described as «stoically erotic», his croon distant yet determined—a secret pleasure hidden somewhere in his seemingly unmoved tone of voice. (That bedrock of patient malice, anchoring the song in inescapable hatred.) The course is certainly being served cold on this one.
No one writes a revenge song like Mr. Gira. Starting with this release in 1990 and continuing through 1995 at the very least, he seems to have come up with several vengeance fantasies («Better than You», «Low Life Form», «I See Them All Lined Up») in some drunken paranoia aimed at people and for reasons he in later interviews said he no longer remembers. As detailed and specific as they are sadistic, these grandiloquent revenge fantasies are so over the top as to almost negate their own desire, the exaggerated reveries of torture too far removed from reality to really carry a sting.
Considering that there's something comfortingly martyr-like and glorious, almost romantic, about torture, I much prefer to daydream about the perhaps worse—and much more likely—fate that awaits my foes: a long life of mediocrity and of slow, inevitable loss. In death you lose everything, which is the same as losing nothing; you can only truly lose by continuing to live. A loss that's as inevitable as it is irreversible. The vast expanse that could be the rest of your life, reality growing larger as you grow smaller, decreasing by increments unnoticable but for sudden realisations in front of the mirror now and then.
As I fantasise about the doomed fates of these people, wishing upon them the mediocrity that necessarily awaits those who flee from reality into illusions and lies that so suck other people in, I see decades-long, loveless partnerships with lovers who stick together simply because they have no other alternatives… I see careers devoted to meaningless activities or pointless endeavours, based on the same lies their grotesque existences are sacrifices to… I see bored, middle-aged people full of disappointment and secret loathing for themselves and their partner, wandering the dead halls of museums and art galleries out of habit, in desperate, yet helplessly unimaginative attempts at injecting colour into the downward trajectory of their clichéd and monotonous lives… charter tours with other complacent and by now lazy pensioners, killing time with activities that neither enlighten nor satisfy… I see bookshelves full of soothing, but in the end useless lies, passed on to children raised on the delusions of their parents, and so doomed to wallow in the same muck. May they live to see not only the true nature of the lies of their countless years of truth-dodging, cowardly and non-confrontational existence, but to see it in their offspring, too, sprouting like a strangling weed planted by themselves in the only people they ever truly loved. I see a cancer upon their conscience, their love (whenever momentarily ignited) nothing but a lack of hate—that absence of disgust in habitual existences, where you get used to just about anything. I see them confused, never quite understanding themselves or their actions… I see them slowly pass away like this, telling themselves their well-worn lies more frantically, but no longer all that convinced by them, understanding a little too much, yet, in the end, still too little… I see them staring helplessly up from their deathbed, the poverty of their own «love» prompting them to doubt that of the «close ones» closing in on their deathbead (already squabbling over inheritance), as the loneliness they’ve run from their entire lives is unveiled at last.
10. SWANS: «The Most Unfortunate Lie» From White Light from the Mouth of Infinity (1991)
Revenge fantasies that revolve around the loathed one's death carry within them the naïve hope that the wrongdoer's conscience will be awakened at the very last minute, and that a sincere wish for repentance—which by then will be too late, of course—will finally torment them in a final, powerless spasm of painful regret. (A kind of spiritual purification.) More than the body, we want the person's core to be affected.
As could be illustrated by SWANS' «Most Unfortunate Lie» (which would be made available on Various Failures, but in edited, instrumental form), the ultimate hope of revenge remains the prospect of the cur who incurred our wrath realising, too late, the errors of their ways and uncovering, at the very last minute (long and agonising), the truth obscured by their lies:
Someone was here before me and they took the possibility away And without any control or freedom the elements were laid down in this way And so my mind is slowly devoured by the ideas to which it subscribes And in the end I'm left with nothing except the memory of believing my own lies And where are you now, my most unfortunate lie?
11. SWANS: «Power and Sacrifice» From White Light from the Mouth of Infinity (1991)
Politically engaged music is often awkward and heavy-handed, preachy and one-sided. But like Bob Dylan once remarked (once he'd stopped writing topical songs): «There’s no left wing and no right wing, only upwing and down wing.» Far more interesting, then, is an analysis of power, viewed through a psychedelic prism:
I want power, though the earth is lost and spinning I feel power, buried in the ground where twenty million Died like heroes stealing this same power that I'm feeling I feel power. I feel a sacrifice Now my blood is feeling clean
12. SWANS: «Song for the Sun» From White Light from the Mouth of Infinity (1991)
Michael Gira apparently lived in a windowless New York basement for most of the 1980s and '90s, so it's perhaps not surprising that when he sings, «Let the sun come in,» it's a defiant challenge, not a wish or relief.
Now they say that Hell is a place where memory's dead and the only thing left is this moment moving further away But I will always try to remember the way you moved your lips against mine in the lonely bed If I forget who you were then, I will lose what I am now Forever and ever and ever and ever again But I won't cry, no, I will survive the light of the sun as it enters me Let it come right in, let the sun come in
13. SWANS: «You Know Nothing» From White Light from the Mouth of Infinity (1991)
Not many lyricists get away with, or even attempt, tackling the subject of modern science, but in the early to mid-'90s, Gira's lyrics were positively teeming with quasi-scientific, semi-mystical references to quantum and astrophysics. One theory, invoked by quantum physicists to square up certain discrepancies when translating quantum theory from mathematics into everyday language, proposed that reality consists of parallel universes, one actuality for every logical possibility:
And nothing is written in the book, reality is made by you And every lie that you pursue, eventually turns true And I was told that your eyes would shine, a light up into space And infinity would then consume this ordinary place
You know nothing, you know nothing at all How could you know, you'll never know anything at all
14. SWANS: «The Sound of Freedom» From Love of Life (1992)
Legend has it SWANS used to play at such loud volumes that audience members would vomit or bleed out of their ears. This was a touch Gira lifted off Pink Floyd (of all bands), who used to play at record decibel levels back when Gira was a teenage hippie acid freak attending European rock festivals.
Where the Japanese painter and installation artist Yayoi Kusama tried to obliterate her sense of self by immersing herself in rooms and paintings full of disorienting, almost atom-like polka dots, Gira tried to rid himself of an awareness of heavy gravitational pull and of the density of mass of his body—which had resulted from excessive LSD consumption—through loud volumes of noise. Thus the violent, mercilessly grinding music so many people found oppressive was actually an uplifting, transcendental exercise for Gira. He was going for freedom:
Nobody else can see you Nobody knows you feel Go further back inside you Where nothing else is real Now throw yourself into a pool Of silence you can see And hold the mirror before your eyes And light the white light, it's the sound of freedom
Now time is just a picture that Moves before your eyes And every lie that I believe Is falsely compromised And this is not a sound And we are not alive Someone else was here before In someone else's mind And the ground we walk is sacred And every object lives And every word we speak Will punish or forgive And the light inside your body Will shine through history Set fire to every prison Set every dead man free And the air we're breathing now We breathed a million times And the darkest dreams we dreamed Were dreamed by other minds So take us to the water Take us to the sound And wash my soul away Where it never can be found...
And the white light that surrounds us Is the sound of freedom pounding And the ground that opens up Spits the fire from freedom's mouth And the concrete, glass and steel Break with a freedom you can feel and The wind that blows through heaven It screams the sound of freedom And the violence that destroys Is the birth of freedom singing And the lovers in the field Make the sound of freedom bleeding And the pain that eats my mind Is the shout of freedom's life And the sea that splits in two Is the cut of freedom's knife And the fire that burns this city Is the white light in freedom's eye And the white light is the sound Of freedom
15. SWANS: «No Cure for the Lonely» From Love of Life (1992)
When Leonard Cohen pens a song called «Ain't No Cure for Love», trust Michael Gira to counter with «No Cure for the Lonely»…
A minor song that even at the time was relegated to only the CD version of the Love of Life album, «No Cure for the Lonely» suffers more as a result of the delivery than the lyrics, Gira still not relaxed enough in his style to not hide the emotional nerve behind an inapproachably stoic voice. But what I dislike the most about this particular song is how accurately it describes a situation, a state, the remainder of a life.
16. SWANS: «Her» (live—excerpt) From Omniscience (1993)
Gira may write songs more hateful than most, but then he's capable of songs far more romantic than most, too: a Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan or Nick Cave would be too busy seducing some fashion model groupie with their words to ever evoke undying love beyond death. When Cave sings, «A wicked wind whips up the hill / A handful of hopeful words / I love her and I always will / The sky is ready to burst,» it's just his way of saying, «Come over here and give me a blow job, baby.» He knows girls just adore that shit.
One shouldn't be so surprised, perhaps, that the most capable writer of revenge fantasies is also one of the most capable writer of love songs. As with hate songs, love songs may ultimately lead the daydreamer to thoughts of death, envisaged as the moment of truth. As Gira would sing, years later:
Free from your past Free of your future too There's nothing left to rise above but you
…
When I lay dying upon some bed I hope that you'll remember this The only one I want to see is you
As with truth and justice, there's the idea that love, too, will finally be confirmed (and so justified) in the final moments. «Her», in this live rendition whose open soundscape evokes the outer space of the lyrics, is «Mr. Tambourine Man» in the form of a love song; a lullaby in the face of the big sleep, indulging in the unlikely, yet beautiful idea that at death your souls will be shooting off together, through the space-time continuum into eternity.
17. SWANS: «God Loves America» (live—excerpt) From Omniscience (1993)
Consumerism is a recurring theme in Gira's writings, and not always in a purely unfavourable or judgmental light (even if his frustration with Capitalism can be traced in the use of prostitution and masochism as metaphors for work). This topical song is an exception. It's a bit heavy-handed, perhaps, but I do love a good rant…
«And that's that.»
To anyone who made it this far, stay tuned for part two, taking you from 1994 through to 2007…
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