Condition: New
Swans - My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky
Label: Young God Records
Catalog#: YG43
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
New
Includes printed inner sleeve with lyrics and drop card. Card contains code for free MP3 download of album.
Comes with title and info sticker on shrink wrap.
Country: US
Released: 21 Sep 2010
Genre: Rock
Style: Art Rock, Avantgarde, Experimental
Tracklist
A1 No Words / No Thoughts 9:23
A2 Reeling The Liars In 2:20
A3 Jim 6:44
A4 My Birth 3:51
B1 You Fucking People Make Me Sick 5:11
Vocals - Devendra Banhart , Saoirse Daniel Gira
B2 Inside Madeline 6:33
B3 Eden Prison 6:01
B4 Little Mouth 4:12
Credits
Art Direction - Michael Gira
Artwork By - Beatrice Pediconi
Bass Guitar, Electric Guitar, Piano, Drums, Percussion, Synthesizer, Acoustic Guitar, Vocals - Bill Rieflin
Bass Guitar, Jew's Harp, Vocals - Chris Pravdica
Drums, Percussion, Dulcimer, Vibraphone, Keyboards, Vocals - Thor Harris
Drums, Percussion, Dulcimer, Vocals - Phil Puleo
Electric Guitar, E-bow, Vocals - Norman Westberg
Electric Guitar, Steel Guitar, Vocals, Other [Germanic Presence] - Christoph Hahn
Electric Piano [Fender Rhodes], Vocals, Electric Guitar - Kenny Siegal
Guitar, Vocals - M. Gird
Layout - Earl Kuck
Mandolin - Grasshopper
Mastered By - Jamal Ruhe
Mixed By - Adam Sachs , Bryce Goggin , Kevin McMahon
Producer - Michael Gira
Recorded By - Jason La Farge, Kenny Siegal
Trombone - Steve Moses
Trumpet [Slide] - Brian Carpenter
Violin - Jason La Farge
Vocals - Siobhan Duffy Gira
The return of Swans brings a new sound with echoes of the old and of Angels of Light. Five of the eight tracks exceed 5 minutes, making this an album of mostly epic pieces with complex tempo variation and shifting textures around that wall of sound which oscillates between jangles and drones. The exceptions, Reeling The Liars In, My Birth and Little Mouth stand out in their own ways.
To me the most impressive are the 9+ minute No Words/No Thoughts and the one in the middle, You Intercoursing People Make Me Sick. The first opens with glockenspiel/chimes before setting off on a winding road in a barrage of layered guitars and shifting rhythms, whilst a didgeridoo introduces the second of which the first part juxtaposes the voice of a guest vocalist with that of a little girl to eerie effect, somewhat like Identity on Love Of Life. Then the metal/industrial sounds burst forth with great ferocity.
Jim and My Birth come closest to mainstream hard rock. A mid tempo number, Jim gets the Swans stamp through its wild percussion, drones, odd noises and quiet moments inbetween. A dulcimer lends the feel to the dissonant My Birth. I would say Eden Prison with its churning cascades and jungle drums resemble most the sound of Great Annihilator and Inside Madeline brings to mind both the orchestral majesty of White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity & The Burning World as well as the drones of Soundtracks for the Blind.
The acerbic lyrics of the acoustic Reeling The Liars In more than compensate for its softer sonics, being closer kin to a song like Blind on Gira's Drainland or to the styles explored by Angels of Light. My Father concludes with Little Mouth, a track made special by the chanting of what sounds like massed choirs.
The themes explore the extremes as always whether expressed by fierce electrical storms characterized by jarring textures or just by voice and acoustic flavors as perfected way back by World of Skin. Gira fans whose favorite albums include Great Annihilator and the early 1990s masterpieces White Light and Love Of Love will be happiest with this powerful album.
Incredibly, it's been 14 years since the release of the last full-length. Soundtracks for the Blind was a daunting and thorough two-disc collage -- a seemingly conclusive statement, appearing to wring out the last of what Gira wished to express under the Swans moniker via an extensive array of means -- soundscapes, live cuts, drones, electronic beats, post-rock, deceptively pretty synthesisers, spoken word passages, with Michael's distinctive singing voice a haunting and recurrent theme.
In terms of sound, My Father... doesn't exactly pick up from there. Nor would it slip comfortably under Gira's Angels of Light project, which has been running since the initial de-activation of Swans. There are strong elements of both, but as Gira said himself, the Swans idea was revived as a means to move forward, and ultimately, the album does just that.
Those who picked up I Am Not Insane (a collection of Gira's initial album ideas, presented as solo pieces for voice and acoustic guitar) will be soon to realise just how skeletal those versions were. Their transformation is astonishing -- although most of the melodies and lyrics remain just about intact, these early sketches are almost unrecognisable in amongst the heaps of instrumentation and collaborative ideas that have been piled on top by the rest of the line up. A towering atmosphere has gathered to decorate the bare bones of what Gira brought to the table, and it's unmistakably Swans -- clattering and rickety and unstable -- forever ominous and occasionally plainly terrifying.
"No Words/No Thoughts" was my easily my least favourite track from I Am Not Insane, but here it's a brutally brilliant opener, exploding from the initial introduction of glistening chimes as a thundering one-chord catastrophe. It's left as a pummelling loop for a full three minutes, featuring warped electronics, backwards cymbals and what sounds like trombones screaming in piercing slides, before breaking down and allowing Gira to finally makes his vocal entry. It's at the point that his perfectly executed baritone drawl enters the piece that it becomes beyond doubt that Swans have continued to maintain the high standard left by Soundtracks for the Blind back in 1996. He is on blinding form.
Elsewhere there's "Jim", lurching forward on a heave-ho rhythm that rattles and thuds on piano and guitar battered in unison. Personally I hear a likeness to "All Souls' Rising" by Angels of Light for the way in which it almost stops and starts in these hefty lumbering steps, with an organic intensity that arises out of the musician -- the velocity and anger behind each hit and strum, not just the timbre of the instrument.
"You Fucking People Make Me Sick" is the only track that wasn't present on I Am Not Insane and it's probably the most unnerving piece of the lot. Contorted vocals from Devendra Banhart are echoed in a twisted child-like tone and scattered across minor-chord guitar jangle, before the piece cuts abruptly into a brilliant interplay between percussive stomp and a juddering flourish of piano dissonance. After countless listens, I've yet to fully "get" the nightmarish and bizarre first half, but find myself in absolute awe of the harrowing noise of the second. A lot of these pieces are left to spiral off on their own accord, often giving way to freakish atonal experimentation and leaving the sound of a band completely enveloped in their own grooves, playing off of each other with an unspoken musical understanding. It's fascinating to hear, if not always immediately accessible.
After the thudding locomotive of "Eden Prison", "Little Mouth" closes the album on a weary melancholy deeply rooted in Angels of Light, with a thick chorus of backing vocals guiding it forward. The final minute sees the instruments away to leave Michael singing into silence -- a particularly beautiful highlight from I Am Not Insane that was thankfully retained for the final product. In fact, it's these closing stages that highlight a particular worry I had prior to going into my first listen. Would the full band versions of these tracks do justice to the strength of the song-writing at work on I Am Not Insane? I needn't have given it a moment thought. Swans Are Not Dead.
Swans - No Words/No Thoughts
Live@Teatro Espace
3-12-2010
Torino,Italy
Gira has continually made vital, interesting music
Swans - You Fucking People Make Me Sick
swans don't make albums to cheer you up. swans make albums to make you travel to the dark abyss of the soul, circle around it several times, fight a complex battle with its contents and emerge transformed as something fantastical. have fun with john lennon
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