ANHEDONIAC © 1997 $15.00 (2004 reissue)

PORTABLE PLATEAU

Jarboe
Anhedoniac

Sometimes when you want to get underground music,you have to genuinely go underground. those of us who were listening to the real thing in the mid 80's understand what I mean... You didn't find NickCave, Spacemen 3, the Minutemen, Half Japanese,Sonic Youth or Husker Du in the STORES (at least not in the midwest). You ordered them out of messy newsprint catalogs or obscure fanzines. About 6 weeks after you ordered the vinyl showed up at your doorstep. It had that "new" smell to it and your face glowed as the anguish and guitars roared out of your speakers like nothing you could buy at Musicland. Of course, one of the greatest of these "underground" bands was the (then) unbelievably harsh and vehement Swans.

Like Sonic Youth, 8 Eyed Spy and Live Skull, Swans were part of the "New York Noise" scene, but they were by far the most intense. Michael Gira's gutteral bass vocals and the band's calculated, repetition driven musical BOOM made them both feared and respected. And among this noise storm was Jarboe, the band's keyboardist and counterpoint female vocalist. She was the eye in Gira's hurricane, his canary in a barbed wire cage.

Swans, of course, changed drastically (due largely to her influence) over the years, prying into folk, ambient, and even pop before calling it quits with last year's ominous Soundtracks for the Blind. Now Jarboe is on her own and she's taken the music, at least in concept, back to where it was in the mid-80's. And you have to order this CD from the source... You won't find it in a store near you, no matter how "hip" it is. Jarboe has taken the underground, in effect, underground again.

But remember that what made all the great "underground" artists so great was a mix of two factors: Originality and anger: You can bet that Anhedoniac is bubbling over with both. Having long since set her caged bird free, Jarboe's vocals range the many faces of her inner emotions. You can compare this awe-inspiring chanteuse with Nico, Diamanda Galas, or PJ Harvey if you must have comparison... But really on this one she is nobody but Jarboe, and her vocals stake out a new identity out of the collapse of the old. Here, an old southern drawling crone tells a tale of captivity, addiction, lust, and betrayal. There, an innocent childlike lover croons to her "sinner". The album spirals on until all personalities are spent and only an ominous, instrumental hum is heard (thanks to ambient masters Panasonic). It is at this point that we hit "Honey", where a barely gasping Jarboe lists all the things that somebody (Gira?) can't do to her because there is nothing left to do anything to, or, as she puts it "you can't explode what's empty". But then she notes, "You can't erode the memory"... Then she tops it with the death knell "I'm A Killer",where the many personalities make an encore to celebrate the death of the old. And death it is; Anhedoniac being a tragedy,a catharsis, if you will. Jarboe in fact has declared her next album (being recorded in Israel) as the Phoenix reborn in new skin, but that's for later. First she must rid the past by dying an underappreciated Cassandra.

And so she does. In the the title track, she speaks of her savior giving her a box of "his disease" before tumbling to "the one he strangled in the sea" who beckons him "come to your drink". In the bottle version, you hear a bottle clank to the floor after the vocals fade out... A reference to Gira's infamous alcoholism? In "Forever", perhaps the albums single most moving track, she claims, "I will believe in you... Forever" as a background vocal swoons into primal ecstasy. Believe in whom, exactly? Is this a paeon to love regardless of the> cost, or a is this a statement of self; a release from the cage? Possibly... In the liner notes to the press release Jarboe claims she tried hard to declare her female identity in the male dominated Swans. "Forever" seems to state that she has moved on to find this identity, a search that took her through three solo albums where she often tried as many non-Swans sounding tracks as shecould. Yet here she acknowledges what Gira has taught her and grasps her Swans influence with both hands, turning it into a new force all her own. Indeed, "Rage", "Burnt", and "the Cage" are the best uses of the "old" Swans style since 1987's "New Mind". But then, this is a concept album reflecting thosetimes, as the story in "Circles in Red Dirt" about the man named "Michel" makes clear.

But hear this album with new ears, and be prepared admist the anguish to find the release... A release unlike any I've felt since Husker Du called it a day and Wal Mart started stocking the SST label. Anhedoniac is a death cry, but only of an era... And at the end of one era one is left clean and fulfilled and awaiting the next. So what do you do now? Start by scrolling to www.swans.pair.com for ordering info,and remember what it was like (or, if you're too young, experience what it was like) to have music that's real and crude and powerful to be delivered to your doorstep. The kind of music they just don't stock at Musicland...

- Danen Jobe