Tonight’s selections from Swans side project The World of Skin’s (aka Skin) third album, 1990’s Ten Songs For Another World. An experimental neo-folk album perfect for mental journeys.
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Please Remember Me
For a while, though, they were the most mutable of bands. In a half-decade span beginning in the mid '80s, they swiftly transformed from bone-crushing no wave brutalists to God-fearing gothic rockers, and then to featherweight neo-folkies. White Light from the Mouth of Infinity and Love of Life, originally released in 1991 and 1992, respectively, marked the end of that metamorphosis, as the band settled into a sound at once songful and vast, luminous as a glass menagerie and forceful as a falling anvil.
The two albums have long been treated as minor works in Swans' discography: out of print for years, they were cherry-picked (alongside selections from 1989's major-label fiasco The Burning World and the Gira/Jarboe side project the World of Skin) for 1999's inauspiciously titled Various Failures 1988-1992. "I'm ambivalent about much of it, but then what do I know????" [Michael] Gira has written of the music on that anthology. "Some of it is genuinely good I think. Anyway, I was learning (how to write a song) as I went." — Pitchfork
Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes
It's true that the period marked a shift from pummeling mantras to something more "musical," with singing instead of shouting and cascading chords instead of just drop-tuned gut-punches. That said, even here, Gira's concept of "songwriting" remains idiosyncratic: there's little in the way of verse/chorus structures, mainly just mantra-like incantations and chords wreathed around gleaming pedal tones surrounded by wide-open expanse. [...]
The textures and tone colors are well suited to Gira's favorite themes, like love, death, and the sublime. — Pitchfork
The Child's Right
Formed in 1982 and fronted by vocalist and guitarist Michael Gira (currently busying himself with Angels of Light and Young God Records), Swans included a revolving cast of unrelentingly deft and like-minded downtown players, most significantly vocalist/keyboardist Jarboe, who's pitch-clear voice contrasted diabolically with Gira's deeper-than-hell bellow. Perhaps because of his fire and brimstone intonation-- which makes Ian Curtis sound like a pistol-whipped soprano-- Swans were often pigeonholed as a too-dark, almost laughable gothic experiment. The assessment is reductive and tone-deaf: at their best, Swans seamlessly layered no-wave and heavyweight industrial pounding with streams of erudite Middle-Eastern drones, drop tuning, monolithic sheets of noise, harrowing, force-fed dynamics, and gorgeously lilting strings and acoustic guitars. Add to this adventurousness Gira's dark tales of warped love, lusty damnation, torturous addiction, and soul-sickened existentialism and you've got yourself one of the more interesting musical takes on the underbelly of human nature to crop up in the last two decades. — Pitchfork
Black Eyed Dog (Nick Drake cover)
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A Parasite And Other Memories
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WHO’S TALKING TO WHO?
Jimmy Kimmel: Marlon Wayans, Bowen Yang, Matt Rogers, Brigitte Calls Me Baby, guest host Lamorne Morris
Jimmy Fallon: Rob Lowe, Sutton Foster, Christian Pulisic, Reggie Conquest
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Seth Meyers: Michael Cera, Daisy Edgar-Jones, James Bay, José Medeles (R 7/17/24)
After Midnight: Pete Holmes, Maria Bamford, Vinny Thomas
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The Daily Show: Pre-empted
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