I don't dislike King of Limbs, but I haven't revisited it at all since it came out. It just kinda came and went. Shockingly forgettable, albeit decent. It doesn't help that it feels somewhat like marked-down Can, and Can is way better at playing that particular game than Radiohead (and pretty much better than every band in general, but yeah). I'm not sure where they'll go on their next album - I'm assuming they'll keep pushing forward, but I'd love a return to In Rainbows-type stuff. Their best, in my opinion.
You might've noticed I'm on a Swans kick. Y'all need to join me. I'm tracking back to pick up everything I've missed, which amounts to a handful of live albums and some b-side/rarities compilations (plus their one and only maligned album, The Burning World). I can't wait to see where they go on their next album in May, because The Seer two years ago was the best album they ever recorded (and that's saying a lot for a band so great and so prolific), but more than that was utterly career-defining in a way that makes me wonder how they could possibly follow it up. Not that I'm doubting them, I'm just dumbfounded that Gira and co. keep finding ways to push themselves in new exciting directions.
I don't dislike King of Limbs, but I haven't revisited it at all since it came out. It just kinda came and went. Shockingly forgettable, albeit decent. It doesn't help that it feels somewhat like marked-down Can, and Can is way better at playing that particular game than Radiohead (and pretty much better than every band in general, but yeah). I'm not sure where they'll go on their next album - I'm assuming they'll keep pushing forward, but I'd love a return to In Rainbows-type stuff. Their best, in my opinion.
You might've noticed I'm on a Swans kick. Y'all need to join me. I'm tracking back to pick up everything I've missed, which amounts to a handful of live albums and some b-side/rarities compilations (plus their one and only maligned album, The Burning World). I can't wait to see where they go on their next album in May, because The Seer two years ago was the best album they ever recorded (and that's saying a lot for a band so great and so prolific), but more than that was utterly career-defining in a way that makes me wonder how they could possibly follow it up. Not that I'm doubting them, I'm just dumbfounded that Gira and co. keep finding ways to push themselves in new exciting directions.
Anyway. Everybody set aside twenty and listen:
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King of Limbs is exactly that: forgettable. It's like a Thom Yorke solo electronica album, the one he's made numerous times now wherein he just warbles something that sounds ad libbed over a generic light-electronic breakbeat. It's incredibly ungood. And particularly disappointing following In Rainbows, which was the musical equivalent of like a 40 year old former-star putting up an MVP season.
I've never listened to Swans before, so I am now. I know literally nothing about this band, so the fact that you recommend it so highly means I'm missing out on something I'd probably like a lot.
Swans are both impossible to describe and impossible to recommend enough but I'll try to give you a brief primer. Gira said he came up with the name because Swans are "a beautiful animal with really ugly temperaments," which is a pretty great way of describing their body of work. They got their start in the early 80s in the same no-wave scene as Sonic Youth (and in fact, were friendly with each other, practicing in the same Avenue B loft space - Thurston Moore was even an early member of Swans before they actually released anything, if I recall correctly), and were kind of like the evil version of SY: noisy as hell, but way more brutal and menacing. Just take a look at the album art for their debut album:
(I have this on a t-shirt, by the way. Love people's bewildered reactions to it.)
or listen to "Raping a Slave" (yeah, I know) to get an indication of early Swans.
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Not for everybody - I like it, but it's my least favorite era of Swans. But they started to move away from that sound and into more melodic work, and Children of God is seen as the turning point. This was my first Swans album, and makes an excellent primer, because it still indicates the noisy, punishing roots from whence they sprung while also expanding their sound into more melodic work. This is the first Swans song I heard that I fell in love with:
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Though this is probably an even better indication of the poles of earlier Swans, starting softly before abruptly changing into something harsher, but not at all ugly:
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After this they released a string of albums - White Light from the Mouth of Infinity, The Great Annihilator, The Burning World, and Soundtracks from the Blind - that are generally seen as their high point. This is "jangly" swans, more lush orchestrations and warm instrumentations. Though again, there are exceptions, and of course, even "pretty" Swans contains some dark emotions; here, have a song written from the perspective of serial killer Dennis Nilsen:
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Gira ended the band for 15 years after Soundtracks for the Blind, and pursued an all-acoustic project that sort of picked up where Swans left off, called Angels of Light, but I'm not familiar enough with them to include them in this. Still, from what I've heard, it's good [expletive]. Then, for whatever reason, he came back in 2010 with My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, which in retrospect seems like a dry run for The Seer, but is nonetheless a damn good album. It synthesizes all the stuff that make Swans what they are: unconventional instrumentation, rich arrangements, experimental genre-bending. I guess by now you could classify Swans as "post-rock," but it's in no way the kind of post-rock that crescendo-core [expletive] like Explosions in the Sky or GY!BE are (and I like those bands, but Swans are so much more varied and interesting).
I already linked my favorite track from The Seer, one of its three long pieces (the title track is over 30 minutes, and the closer, "The Apostate" - maybe the definitive Swans song - clocks around 23), but here's a couple of the shorter ones that demonstrate how much range and ground that album covers. It clocks in at 2 hours but is still tight as hell. (That's one of the great things about being a Swans fan; their "short" albums are like 75 minutes.)
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(That's Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs singing lead.)
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(And this has Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker of Low providing harmony, natch.)
Their next album hits in May and is going to feature St. Vincent and several others as guests. They released a live album a couple of months ago which gives an indication of where they'll go, but Swans are delightfully unpredictable. One of the cool things about listening to Swans' live work is how often you hear underdeveloped or completely different versions of their album tracks, and Gira is constantly changing his music; he's notorious for barely ever playing old tracks, and he'll talk frankly about his artistic process. Here he is on an early version of "A Piece of the Sky," discussing the influence of Sticky-Fingers-era Rolling Stones and Neil Young, as well as his uncertainty with what the song is or what he ultimately wants the song to become. Very cool to listen to and then follow up with the "finished" (my words; Gira will tell you the album is unfinished) version from The Seer.
Thanks for a really thorough summary, TTM. I've listened to, well, a substantial part of the songs you've listed. I'm not sure if they're for me, but their more recent songs were pretty good, particularly the Karen O song. I can hear some My Bloody Valentine vibe.
No problem. Yeah, Swans are kind of an anomaly among even my own musical tastes, so they're never the easiest sell, and it's even harder to find somebody else that loves them. Not that I fell in love with them overnight, either.
Ever since I can remember, I've always "discovered" and began enjoying media, music, tv shows, etc long after they were released.
I just "discovered" Linkin Park's debut offering "Hybrid Theory" and soph effort "Meteora" about 2 months ago after redeeming some iTunes cards that I got for Christmas in 2010.
Music after 2000 isn't so bad, after all. In fact, it kicks assss.
Episode 7 of True Detectives ended with a TVZ song, Lungs, as mentioned in the TV thread. Sent me back to my Townes collection which made me think of jl's murder ballads question. Anyway, Townes' stuff wouldn't be considered murder ballads but I'm thinking much of it might hit that emotion you were interested in.
Attention fans of The Black Keys, a good cause and baseball........
The Black Keys are raising money for their hometown's little league via t-shirt sales. All profits will be donated to the league. The shirts aint so bad lookin...i grabbed one myself.
