I’ve evidently gotten to the age wherein I’m forgetting about stuff I’ve already written about here. I got about one third into a strenuously long-winded post about carving things in wet cement in Manhattan that was eventually going to meander around, after a few tenuous anecdotes, to the main point of the post, that being the cryptic concrete carving outside of 93 Avenue B, the former “bunker” of Michael Gira and Jarboe and SWANS headquarters (pictured above, courtesy of the Living Jarboe), only to remember that I’d already devoted a big ol’ post to it in 2013. Whoops.
In any event, that little strip of East Village has been on my mind, in the last few weeks, for another reason, that being the somewhat half-baked series, “Russian Doll” on Netflix. I enjoyed Season One as sort of a cloying hipster version of “Groundhog Day,” but I’m really struggling with Season Two. In any case, a lot of the action happens in and around Tompkins Square Park and its surrounding environs. I took a stroll over there this morning, now a destination for mimosa-swigging brunches, to see if the SWANS tag was still etched into the concrete.
Once again, this is the spiraling vortex motif that adorned their releases circa 1987’s Children of God, which found the band slowly evolving their sound out of slave-ship stern-und-drang and into more accessibly melodic terrain, largely via the addition of Jarboe, whose soaring vocals and introspective songwriting leant the band a more versatile palette.
The album in question, however, was sort of mired by the unwitting albatross of an ill-considered (to my mind) Joy Division cover (“Love Will Tear Us Apart”) which really did no one any favors apart from possibly the coffers of Ian Curtis’ estate. While it also featured SWANS favorites like “New Mind” (which prompted the band’s first ever “proper” music video, finding Gira lip-synching into a flashlight, drooling and brandishing an axe) and the strikingly delicate “In My Garden” (a full-on Jarboe contribution), my favorite moment of the album has always been the title track. Though still anchored by SWANS’ signature, pummeling rhythm section, the studio version features a haunting performance by Jarboe, harmonizing with herself a recurring, ominous mantra about the hollow promises of religious dogma.
It’s the live version, however, from 1988’s Feel Good Now that really defines it, for me. While his voice is absent from the comparatively ethereal studio version, Gira’s terrifying vocals duet with Jarboe’s in the live setting, providing the tyrannical counterpoint of a vengeful Pentecostal preacher. To my ears, this track is the perfect balance of the band’s brutal beginnings and its embrace of a broader aesthetic.
Today, SWANS are recording a new album with yet another new line-up. While she contributed to their 2012 album, The Seer, Jarboe is no longer a member of SWANS. The space that had been the SWANS Bunker is still a hookah bar/restaurant called The Horus Cafe, and the surrounding neighborhood is no longer quite as fearsomely dicey as it had been.
The carving in the cement in front of their old front door, however? That’s still there.
Recent Comments