"She holds the keys to the room over there. And I, I will follow her, but I will not enter there. Yeah, we will suffer for nothing, and we will never forgive. God never told anyone to act like this. A second in your presence is a miracle of love. A rejected second a miracle of love. The young man is insecurity in the disgust of a lover. The woman is strong in her accommodating bed of lies. How can they embrace what they cannot perceive? And how can they love what they have failed to ensnare? A second among your memories is a miracle of lies. A beat of your heart is a miracle of love. White lights in a dark sky a miracle of love. A single moment in your arms a miracle of love.."
So recites Michael Gira, and immediately after there is jubilation, exultation, and palpitation. A triumphant chorus of magmatic noise, combined with dynamics of a power and intensity perhaps still unmatched even now in the new century of experimentation, interwoven with preciousness forcibly taken from the past and bent to the most disparate needs.
The Swans are the typical example of how a certain sense of the sublime truly makes a difference. "Swans were the shit", as I read somewhere in the annals of underground music... This group truly deserved the golden palm of the Olympus of the Truest Music: the level of complacency in their inevitable self-pity that reaches unexpected peaks of inner desolation, the music is frenzied sacrality, sudden like the cry of an infant in swaddling, the majesty of the themes addressed (love, power, the passage of time, failure, death) is loaded, as the record progresses, with implications now disturbing, now irreverent, indecipherable and then obvious.
Their music, if it must be so, will speak to your heart, it will pierce you with the verb of voidness and fatality... Enchanting and caustic, powerful and delicate as it may be, this is a masterpiece for refined palates, not for everyone: in fact, you risk being zombified forever, given Michael Gira's voice timbre, or falling prey to much more sacrilegious, feminine, and rosy hands: those of Jarboe, of her chants, her masked liturgical little theaters, her never too idolized vocal gifts....
The best album ever, along with the twin album "Love of Life", from my beloved SQUANSI... forever.... a chrysanthemum on my grave, a breath of wind... a last sensual, fleeting, cadaverous kiss... and, please, note the cover, so placid, so naively reassuring....
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
01 Better Than You (05:51)
I'm so glad I'm better than you,
I'm so glad I'm better than you are.
I'm so glad I'm better than you,
I'm so glad I'm better than you are.
Sit here. Now look in the mirror -
Something's wrong, your face is distorted.
Feel the flow: there's blood in your body.
And you can see clearly every heartbeat you make.
Close your eyes, touch your mouth in the mirror -
That's the wound that is made where the past meets the future.
I'm so glad I'm better than you,
I'm so glad I'm better than you are.
I can see clearly through this veil of reality.
And I can remember the feel of your skin.
No you never knew me and you never will
When nothing's there, nothing is concealed.
I'm so glad I'm better than you,
I'm so glad I'm better than you are.
I'm so glad I'm better than you,
I'm so glad I'm better than you are.
02 Power and Sacrifice (05:37)
I want power, because it feels good.
I want power - I'll wash America with blood.
I want power: a clear blue light in the sky.
I feel power, running through my veins and out my eyes
And into empty, godforsaken minds without reality.
I feel power. I feel a sacrifice.
I am dead to right or wrong.
I want power, just like our father knew.
I want power, I'll put my hands in you.
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.
And I feel the power burning like a spear inside of me.
I feel good. I feel right.
I feel a sacrifice.
07 Failure (06:20)
I, I've been lonely And I, I've been blind And I,. I've learned nothing So my hands are firmly tied To the sinking leadweight of failure I've worked hard all my life Money slips through my hands My face in the mirror tells me It's no surprise that I'm Pushing the stone up the hill of failure They tempt me with violence They punish me with ideals And they crush me with an image of my life that's nothing but unreal Except on the goddamned slaveship of failure I'll drown here trying to get up for some air But each time I think I breathe I'm laid on with a double share of the punishing burden of failure I don't deserve to be down here But I'll never leave And I've learned one thing You can't escape the beast In the null and void pit of failure When I get my hands on some money I'll kiss it's green skin And I'll ask it's dirty face "Where the hell have you been?" "I am the fuel that fires the engine of failure." I'll be old and broken down I'll forget who and where I am I'll be senile or forgotten But I'll remember and understand You can bank your hard-earned money on failure I saw my father crying I saw my mother break her hand On a wall that wouldn't weep But that certainly held in The mechanical moans of a dying man Who was a failure My back hurts me when I bend Because I carry a load My brain hurts me like a knife-hole Because I've yet to be shown How to pull myself out from The sucking quicksand of failure Some people live in hell Many bastards succeed But I. I've learned nothing I can't even elegantly bleed Out the poison blood of failure
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