The Real Music

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After disbanding Swans on quite a massive note (a double album called Soundtracks for the Blind), Michael Gira immediately formed a folk outfit called Angels of Light. While Swans were a truly massive, almost ritualistic exploration in sound and emotion, Gira deliberately made his new band much more simple and easier to comprehend, to concentrate on the song's atmosphere rather than the other way around. However, the sheer force in the instruments and Gira's masterful lyrics, are still there.

"I write the songs on acoustic guitar, then gather musicians and friends, and build up the orchestrations with them in the studio and in live performances. My goal is to achieve the same sense of magic I experienced as a child listening to Burle Ives' recordings of Brer Rabbit and other such marvels, including the early Disney children's records I listened to long ago. I view the arrangements as little films created to make a context for the words and voice, so that one can drift off into the world the music creates."

The second album of Angels of Light, How I Loved You, is a true watershed of emotions. According to Gira, all songs on this album are in one way or another, a love song. Sometimes it's nostalgic ("Jennifer's Sorry"), sometimes downright sinister ("My Suicide"), sometimes subtle ("New York Girls") and sometimes almost cinematic ("New City in the Future"). The arrangements definitely do Gira's lyrics justice (a step ahead of "White Light From the Mouth" of Infinity-era Swans); for a folk record, this thing is huge. Gira has a unique storytelling ability that is not unlike Leonard Cohen, but he goes a bit deeper, and a bit further than what Cohen would feel comfortable with. The track "My True Body" tells a story of domestic exploration that would fit very well on a Swans album, but there's more to his lyrics than brute force. "New York Girls" is simply a beautiful love song with an aura of nostalgia. And it still holds up to the fact that Gira is one of my favourite ever lyricists.

When Swans "died", Gira had no intention whatsoever to resurrect the project. But then, on a particular night, he joined the psychedelic folk outfit Akron/Family on stage. His voice had grown very growly and bitter from bronchitis. A song they played started growing into a repetitive mantra; the guitars were sustaining a single chord over and over again. And Gira found himself hypnotised and thought "Well, maybe Swans wasn't such a bad thing after all" (in his own words). Then, three years later, Swans were no longer dead. An upcoming double album called The Seer is scheduled for release by the end of August, which according to the press release "took 30 years to make". Finally, I should mention that if you buy your copy of How I Loved You (and most Gira-related albums), directly from the Young God Records website, you get it signed. I know I will.