A Journey Through My Music Obsessions

I didn't notice Grizzly Bear on your list! Great chair sitting Band.

Grizzly Bear

Edited by Valdez - August 19 2025 at 16:22

Valdez wrote: I didn't notice Grizzly Bear on your list! Great chair sitting Band. Grizzly Bear

I actually had checked out music off Grizzly Bear for music off the album Yellow House quite some years ago which is an excellent album: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA1688CD91B4B084D Been listening again to music off it. Good stuff indeed.

As for the live performance, not that I listened in full, I do like the start which is quite dreamy, it can be reminiscent to me of Talk Talk, and it builds in a really nice way at about the hour mark that does appeal to things I like with live Fishmans.

Some general notes on this topic: I have listened to so much music over the years, and that long songs list with six choices per year often represents music that is fairly fresh to me, and there is a lot of repetition of act-names that are very special to me now (like the ones I cover individually such as the already done Fishmans, Sufjan Stevens, Boards of Canada, Air, Portishead, Stereolab, Beach House, and Swans next probably, but the stuff in the sonsg list is all special to me and lots of acts I would like to cover). I have of course left off a huge amount that I like. What the music commonly does have in common, and I think that comes through in my long playlists, is that the music is very atmospheric often. It was soundtrack music that influenced my tastes very much when young: music by people like Jerry Goldsmith, John Barry, Giorgio Moroder (I adore Midnight Express and Cat People), Klaus Doldinger with Das Boot and various British TV programs (Doctor Who, The Prisoner, Chocky... and much later the brilliant Utopia).

Edited by Logan - August 19 2025 at 20:15

To recap the specific acts I have covered (not including the other lists), I have done Fishmans, Sufjan Stevens, Air, Boards of Canada, Portishead, Stereolab and Beach House.

On to Swans which is a meaty bird to tackle. And I love the related Skin, Angels of Light, Jarboe and M. Gira music so I'm going to cover music off all of that, but not go into such details as Swans due to the time it takes to cover these things. And thank you very much for the recommendations and mentions as well as the commentary. I really appreciate the participation and thoughtfulness, having checked out new-to-me music and discussion. And so glad some people have found music they enjoyed. Blog topic or not, I don't like this thread to feel like a really solitary exercise despite my all-too-common efforts to avoid people like the plague in real life. :) Actually, I have fairly active social life these days especially as I have no work now. Need to find other forms of employment (more than enough work fixing up my house which has been rather neglected).

Michael Gira formed Swans in 1981. It started as part of the "No wave" scene which was a rejection of New Wave music, anti-commercial, and some might say anti music depending on what music means to you. I would disagree with that. It's experimental, post-punkish, like punk sometimes people basically might learn to play instruments as they go along, can sound brutal, dissonant and uses "noise". Often very industrial. It can be very abrasive and very aggressive and vulgar. A genre term used to describe Swans early albums is "pig*uck". That is not a cross between a pig and a duck, but more like Black Mirror's first episode "The National Anthem" (an underrated episode methinks) So early Swans can sound like a big FU! (not Francis Urquhart, okay I'll stop with the British TV references, read those books too) to me. That vulgarity, noise, and aggression does continue with Swans to some extent, but it became a much fuller and more varied experience. It is with Jarboe's involvement and collaboration that Gira's project becomes more melodic, lusher, less abrasive...

So one might simplify things (maybe oversimplify) to say that Swans has three particular periods or eras of music (but there is overlap and the second period needed the first etc. and still have similarities):

The first is the 1982 to 1986 (or early 1987) period which is very noisy, confrontational, and deals with themes like suffering and having power. It uses repetition to create more unease. It seems misanthropic to me and maybe misogynistic, sadistic and masochistic. That's the feeling I get. I have found that period to be very hard to take on the whole (there is music I like from that period). Kind of nasty, I mean there is something kind of nasty or unpleasant to me about Swans throughout (no offence to anyone).

Then there is the 1987 through the 90s period, which actually is my favourite period despite loving the revival era (or actually, the revival period is awesome -- I need not have a favourite). Jarboe's influence does bring in much more melodicism and variation. The music has more dimensions to it and there are more styles on display. Michael Gira has done a lot of folky music (or neofolk/ country folk), and with his Angels of Light, Skin and solo, that's a quality in various albums. The band also take on more post-rock qualities. It could be too repetitive at times for many, but I enjoy repetition and slowly building on motifs. I really like the Gothic qualities to much Swans music.

During the 87 to 1990 period there is Skin which is great, Then Gira would be focusing more on his other project Angels of Light from 1998 to 2009, both of which are worth checking out. Angels of Light should appeal to those into the more folk side of Swans, but also has others Swans qualities, as with Skin.

Then came the Swans revival or reformation period starting with 2010's My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope... which is more in the Angels of Light vein or a Swans album like 1991's White Light From the Mouth of Infinity (and various Skin music). In the 2010s into the 2020's Swans would come up with longer compositions that would really build the intensity and come up with mighty crescendos but also there would be simpler and shorter things that operate more like traditional songs. I do love this period. It has some of its mightiest "big-sound" albums and tracks. Soundtracks for The Blind had some might epic music like Helpless Child and The Sound already, but it's like they turned it up to 11 sometimes in the revival era (repetition and motifs building to crashing crescendos).

Really I could write so much on this and I feel like every album would need detailed explanation but I won't spend many hours on this post. What I will do is make a list of the Swans albums with the genres (both primary and secondary, unedited, even with repeating genres) from rateyourmusic.

Studio Albums:

- Filth (1983): Noise Rock, Punk, Industrial Rock
Industrial, Pig*uck, Post-Punk

- Cop (1984): Noise Rock, Punk, Industrial Rock
Industrial, Industrial Metal, Sludge Metal, Pig*uck

- Greed (1986): Industrial Rock, Punk
Industrial, Darkwave

- Holy Money (1986): Industrial Rock, Punk
Industrial, Darkwave

- Children of God (1987):
Experimental Rock, Gothic Rock, Post-Punk
Industrial Rock, Noise Rock, Neofolk, Gothic Rock

- The Burning World (1989): Neofolk, Gothic Rock
Gothic Country, Country Folk

- White Light From the Mouth of Infinity (1991): Gothic Rock, Neofolk
Neofolk, Ethereal Wave, Post-Rock

- Love of Life (1992): Gothic Rock
Neofolk, Ethereal Wave, Dream Pop
     
The Great Annihilator (1995): Post-Punk, Experimental Rock, Gothic Rock
Industrial Rock, Neofolk, Noise Rock, Ethereal Wave, Gothic Rock, Art Rock

Soundtracks for the Blind (1996): Experimental Rock, Post-Rock, Experimental
Drone, Dark Ambient, Field Recordings, Spoken Word, Sound Collage, Industrial, Post-Industrial, Neofolk

My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky (2010): Experimental Rock, Post-Rock
Noise Rock, Folk Rock, Post-Punk, Progressive Rock

The Seer (2012): Experimental Rock, Post-Rock
Drone, Noise Rock, Neofolk, Totalism

To Be Kind (2014): Experimental Rock, Post-Rock
Noise Rock, Drone, Punk, Totalism, Post-Punk

The Glowing Man (2016): Post-Rock, Experimental Rock
Drone, Noise Rock, Neofolk, Totalism, Ambient

leaving meaning. (2019): Post-Rock, Experimental Rock
Avant-Folk, Gothic Country, Drone, Neofolk, Country Folk

- The Beggar (2023): Post-Rock, Experimental Rock
Drone, Neofolk, Gothic Country, Sound Collage, Ambient, Gothic Rock, Avant-Folk, Country Folk

- Birthing (2025): Post-Rock, Experimental Rock
Drone, Noise Rock, Totalism, Gothic Rock, Krautrock

Live albums I know well:

- Omsniccience (1992): Gothic Rock, Post-Punk
Noise Rock, Art Rock, Industrial, Neofolk, Industrial Rock

- Swans Are Dead (1998): Post-Rock, Experimental Rock
Drone, Noise Rock, Totalism, Post-Punk, Industrial Rock, Gothic Rock, Post-Metal

- Deliquescence (2017): Experimental Rock, Post-Rock
Drone, Noise Rock, Totalism

I regret missing out on purchasing 2024'a live release Live Rope when it was available as a fund raiser. Swans has many live albums and EPs and those can become very collectible. Those commonly are very limited releases done as fund raisers.

There are a number of Swans side-projects and many related projects, I very much like Michal Gira's album Drainland and Jarboe's Sacrifical Cake album as well as music by the act Skin (1987 to 1990) which is great and I really like Angels of Light which has a number of albums between 1999 and 2007. Rateyourmusic gives the following as genres for Angels of Light: Folk Rock, Gothic Country, Experimental Rock, Neofolk, Contemporary Folk, Post-Rock.

I'm going to presnt a playlist covering all the albums I know well, I started on this quite a while ago and some related writings as I had wanted to do this for this little blog early on, which includes two tracks from all Swans studio albums from Children of God to Birthing), a track from each of the lives I mentioned, and a track from various album of related projects (Skin, M. Gira, Jarboe, Angels of Light). later one I might expand into the earlier albums which do have material I like, but just covering that I know well now due to time constraints.

This playlist is no substitute for full albums and actually I would have liked to do at least two tracks per album, but such things can get too time-consuming (doing blogs can be so time-consuming, which I guess is why this is my first). I was most reminded when doing this of just how good Skin can be, and I need to add some Skin to my six tracks per year list which means removing an other or others.

So here's my playlist -- missing the early albums and EPs and many lives of Swans and not complete with the related acts -- of one track per album:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IBUu1_JH_YiyYbA9xlRH-G