Anonymous Bodies in an Empty Room: Swans - “Sex, God, Sex”
February 5th, 2008
Swans - “Sex, God, Sex” (From “Children of God”)
Swans’ “Children of God”– this album’s a musical crucible. These songs of Gira’s and Jarboe’s gather, compress, burn & reduce what we feel and what we experience to pure pale cores.
Flesh of melody flayed away and bone remains: a skinny piano line, a frayed ribbon of flute. Sheaths stripped from the blue glowing nerves.
Life and the complex relationships we form to endure it are boiled to nothing but: fear, power, desire, acquisition, redemption, violation, fury.
And the many rhythms with which we walk, run, breathe, leap are pulverized to one stark, cavernous beat.
And the many sights we see from waking to sleeping — the flashing panoply, the images, the objects, the colors, the faces — these too are stripped to their archetypes: fire, a child, a garden, a mouth, honey, blood.
