Editorial Reviews
Cop/Young God/Greed/Holy Money
Music Review:
Music Review
Violiniste Extraordinaire: Ruggiero Ricci
Music: Battle of the Blues, Vol. 3
Very Best of Euphoric Old Skool Breakdown [Import]
Very Best of Sandii's Hawaii [Import]
Truth [Import] [Limited Edition] [Original recording remastered]
Westing (By Musket and Sextant)
Voyager Series: Indian Journeys
Amazon.com
This double-disc set compiles the complete material from three LPs and one EP released during the Swans' early years: 1984 through 1986. The band's general sound is that of a grungey electric guitar dirge, angry and sullen, not unlike a cross between a slowed down Killing Joke and Lou Reed's Street Hassle. The material is slow and methodical, somewhat spartan, with raspy semi-spoken vocals coming across like some anti-Western mantra. The first, earlier disc is the most stripped down--fuzzed guitars and bass, with a plodding beat. The second disc, although maintaining the same style, features a larger band and fuller sound, with occasional keyboards, female voices, and more complex drum patterns. The Swans' music is very unsettling, seeming at once angry and heavily medicated, as if the composer's rage is being filtered through a haze of antidepressants. It is also very good at conveying this combination of fog and emotion on a visceral level. --Michael C. Mahan
Entertainment Weekly
If you're in the right state if mind, [the Swans'] grueling music is strangely beautiful.