This marks the first time in fuuuuuuck knows how long I've actually paid full retail price for a CD (by that I mean £9 or higher) but it is just impossible to get the career-end late 90s Swans stuff anywhere any cheaper (in Britain, at least). Swans Are Dead is a retrospective live album, released not that long after their original demise, and features two discs of live performances. 1995-1997 was an interesting time for Swans, having gone full circle through the spectrum of non-threatening genres, the band were on the verge of returning to their downright weird and extremely experimental ways when they abruptly ended. The mega-oversized Soundtracks of the Blind amply documents this, and Swans Are Dead is the live album for that era that accompanies it.
There are two discs, one is a show from '95 and the other from '97, and despite this they flow pretty well and I originally thought when I downloaded it that it was the same show spread on both discs. It's even a different line up and I didn't realise - perhaps I'm losing my touch? Or would that be my hearing? Anyway, Swans Are Dead showcases the band's very experimental final tour and is a slice of a place in time that was once very sad and nostalgic. Now that Swans have reformed however, the Are Dead set hasn't lost any meaning; the Swans here is unlike any other period in the band's lucid history so it still stands up with the rest of the catalog, even today. Out on Young God Records.
Hmmm, this is going to be a controversial one for me. I don't know how I can write about this without being downright horrible about one of my favorite bands of all time. Hard Times. Fuck it, here it goes. Burning World is Swans' sixth album, and marked the final nail in the coffin for the early days of audible hell. Industrialists, grinders, artfags and noise nerds dropped their support for this band in fucking droves the moment The Burning World hit the shelves, and it's very easy to see why. Even compared to the tamer-than-usual sound of fifth album Children of God, The Burning World is a hundred thousand miles away from anything Cop or Filth. Gone are the dirging bass rhythms, the relentless and pounding drums, the hellish and fucking loathsome lyrics! In are all the acoustic guitars in the world, a plethora of studio session musicians, a major label budget and THAT Johnny Cash crooning. Yikes!
And thus began a period in the history of Swans that both Jarboe and Mr. Gira like to pretend didn't happen. In retrospect, Gira admits to "loathe" The Burning World, and he even repressed the two albums to follow it on a compilation called Various Failures. You think he's trying to tell us something? The fact that he didn't repress The Burning World for fucking aeons also cements the fact that he hates this record, and even when he did so in the compilation form of Forever Burned, the pressing number was significantly lesser than all the other Swans re-issues. Following "gay" Swans records White Light... and Love of Life went on to achieve something of a cult status (I personally think Love of Life is spectacular) but The Burning World sank like a stone and for the most part remains in the depths of the music world where nobody gives a shit about it.
I've seen this and the CD version go for some ridiculous prices online so when I saw it for like £15 on Discogs I snapped it up, mainly because I am a massive Swans fan boy and simply must get every single record (I cringe at the day I have to fucking buy The Great Annihilator which is by far their worst output), and in all honesty, it started to grow on me. I don't really know why, because it is a shameless, major label funded, Bill Laswell fueled try-hard attempt to break into the mainstream, but I gotta say, The Burning World has a few great songs. If the tribal drumming aspects of "Mona Lisa Mother Earth" aren't good then I might as well be deaf, "Universal Emptiness" is far more impressive that similar-sounding depressed cunts The Smiths and "Saved" is the best song in the world for describing my life. I don't deserve it, but I'm Saved.
Until the disappointing chorus kicks in, "Jane Mary, Cry One Tear" builds and builds in such an epic fashion, with heart-wrenchingly depressing lyrics, and closer "God Damn The Sun" has gone on to become a Gira acoustic classic. It is the only track on this album that stands head and shoulders above the rest. It is purely one of the most goddamn fuckin' miserable things I have ever heard. Even though Swans changed just about everything to do with their sound, the same themes remained. Okay, it's not quite "push your ass up / cry / open your mouth / here's your money / cry / this feels good" or "somebody weaker than you should rape you, bastard" but the lyrics still center around demons, loss, death, depression and apparent incomprehensible self loathing. I think then, we can forgive the mighty Swans this one hiccup! Long live the crushing monster!
