THE WIRE Oct. 1995 SWANS RELATED PROJECTS M Gira
- Drainland Down the years and despite the growth, the stylistic permutations and the occassionnal aberrations into something resembling warmth. Swans have been such a single-minded project you have to wonder why its perpetrator Michael Gira would need to make a solo album. Granted, you can see how Jarboe needs space elsewhere to express ideas that fall outside Gira's scheme of things. The great success of these Swans Related Projects is how they return to the scenes of Swans crimes, so to speak and light them up differently, and then again entirely different from each other. Aptly titled, Gira's Drainland is drained of blood, tears and excess emotion. It's songs are autopsies, body parts laid out on the mortican's slab and spoken-sung in bleak monotone. Well, Gira has always been the most Beckett-like of songwriters. Interlocking word and image in a manner that superficially suggests simple body mechanics - skull connected to your neckbone, etc. Yet the accumulative impact of bare-boned lines dovetailed with equally pared rhythm and melody and muscle-toned with sparse noise samples is emotionally devastating. This is a document of base drives. It could be subtitled "Death Is My Trade". It's an ugly business, but not without it's grotesque, Ambrose Bierce-like humour. An opening taped dialogue featuring Jarboe and Michael is so naked it has you reaching for the Iight switch. The first thing to be said about Jarboe's record is that now she's dropped the breathy torch effect, she's singing better than ever. When she wants to she can outshriek Hole and Babes In Toyland both. But she's strongest when letting up the pace to spin voluptuous, dark-forest electronic fairy tales full of seemingly innocent come-ons and, invariably, deadly pay-offs. If Gira's songs might be singing of the chlld murdered within him long ago, Jarboe sings out for every murdered child buried in a shallow grave. Across these two records the terror rarely lets up. Highly recommended, but cheap thrill seekers are advised to back off. BIBA KOPF
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