ashley thinks about music

Children of God - Really dug this one, they took all the interesting/weird parts of Holy Money, and made an album out of it, to great success.

Love Will Tear Us Apart - The step towards their brief “pop era”. I like it, all three versions of the track and the acoustic Children of God tracks. Not what I listen to swans for, but I gladly take it in.

Feel Good Now - This one was alright, the first live recording I’ve enjoyed all the way through, for the most part. For the releases with different CD and vinyl tracklists, I planned on only listening to the CD order, as I’ve heard that Gira prefers CD, so that’s the definitive version to me. But for this I listened to both orders, since it was originally released on vinyl and switched up later for CD. Overall I prefer the CD order, but I do prefer the vinyl opening with “New Mind” and closing with “Blind Love”, rather than opening with “Blind Love”.

Skin - Blood, Women, Roses - This one is simply just neat to me. I can’t imagine revisiting it a ton, but I love to hear so much of Jarboe so up front.

Skin - Shame, Humility, Revenge - I really loved this album, the textures and arrangements are great, and perfectly compliments the core songs, and Gira’s voice.

The Burning World - The infamous “pop” album. Honestly, pretty good. Nothing crazy good, but certainly pleasant and worth revisiting.

Anonymous Bodies in an Empty Room - The first album that I enjoyed all the way through, at worst feeling content. Gives a glimpse of what The Burning World could’ve (and should’ve) been.

This is as far as I got last time I tried to dive into them. I didn’t stop because I didn’t like the music, in fact I loved it. Life just got in the way.

The masters I used for the studio releases are somewhat unique, as the streaming versions of this era mostly use the 1992 remasters, which didn’t remaster every track, edits a few tracks, and uses the same version of Money is Flesh on both records. I found copies of the original 1986 CD versions, and did my best to “remaster” the files to match the 1992 masters. So my copies sound similar to the 1992 masters, but contain all the original edits/mixes released on CD in 1986.

Time Is Money (Bastard) - love this change up. They kept the anger of the Filth/Cop era, but brought back the driving sound of the first EP. My favourite parts of their past material.

Greed - Feeling more like a direct evolution from Cop/Young God, being slow and brooding, this has the major upgrade of being interesting. Each song feels more distinct, with a lot more sonic and tonal variety.

Holy Money - I prefer this release over Greed. Not just that it has songs that I like more, but I think it does the sequencing better, even more tonal push and pull. “You Need Me”, sung by Jarboe, is a highlight in that respect, along with being a great debut lead vocal. Also the album has “A Screw (Holy Money)”, enough said.

A Screw - Yay! More “A Screw”! And also “Blackmail” is one of my favourite Swans songs so far.

A wonderfully chaotic King Gizzard show. This album, released on the Fuzz Club records imprint Rubber Duck, is the same show that’s officially released as Live At Levitation '16, though with a wonderful Coca Cola style sleeve, inspired by a Jimi Hendrix bootleg. This version’s titling is technically more accurate, as the 2016 Levitation festival was cancelled due to poor weather. Thankfully, many artists, including King Gizzard, scrambled to book last minute shows at local venues. This comes through pretty clearly with the band’s awkward troubleshooting with the sound guy, and general technical issues. It certainly does not make this show any less fun, and makes it a worthwhile listen, even compared to the similar official live album Live In San Francisco '16. The fun inclusion of “Cut Throat Boogie” also helps with differentiating the two shows.

One of, if not my absolutely, favourite albums of last year. Just a great album front to back, amazing production and amazing songwriting. It deserves all the praise it gets. Another one that took way too long to find, and I’m happy the version I found was the indie store alternate cover, it’s a very cool pic.

Unfortunately the vinyl doesn’t sound as good as I’d hoped. When the band were talking about it and their decision to make it a 2LP, they talked about it as if it’d be almost mind blowing. But really, it’s just fine, good in fact, and it’s got almost no pops or clicks. Just underwhelmed. It was also definitely the right choice to release it as a 2LP instead of cramming it into 1.

Here’s my January vinyl ranking. I rank each record by:

- Music - how much I enjoy the music, regardless of format I'm listening to

- Audio - how good the record sounds, both the music itself and any scratches or whatever

- Pressing - how much I like the vinyl colour. I do consider how well black matches the album's vibe, not just as a neutral colour

- Sleeve - how cool the sleeve (or any other extras) are. also taking into account any damage to the sleeve

- Attachment - how willing I'd be to give up this specific copy. Gifts, long sought after and generally ones I like will rank higher here

Swans EP - I love this strange little EP. I love how driving it is all the way through, and its general eeriness, and how both these elements enhance how disconcerting the lyrics are.

Filth - I liked this less than the EP, but overall I enjoyed it. The dark sludgy sound also works so well with Gira’s lyrics, just in a different way to the EP that I personally like less.

Cop - Didn’t like this one. Felt like Filth but slower and boring. Not much thoughts. I do want to revisit it though, I think it just needs to marinate in my mind.

Young God - Basically the same thoughts as above. I did like this marginally more, and not just because it was shorter, I just think these songs did the thing Cop did more effectively.

Body to Body, Job to Job - my favourite release of the era. I think that even though it’s much longer than the proper album releases, the variance in tone track to track really elevated the experience. I think that’s my biggest issue with this era, each record might have a good sound, but it’s all pretty uniform. Maybe I should just put the whole 1982-1985 era on shuffle for a bit…

I’d been looking for this album for a good price for ages, and eventually found it on the Rough Trade when making another order. Adding it to that order ended up being cheaper than buying the standard edition from JB Hi-Fi here in Australia. My troubles didn’t end though, it took a whole month for it to leave New York, and made an unusual stop in Japan before finally reaching Australia.

Anyway, onto the music. This is by far my favourite Pond album, specially the deluxe edition. Just catchy all the way through, and their best incorporation of dance to their sound. I’ve also been a bit turned off by their slower songs, but even those work for me here. I’m glad I got this deluxe edition too, “Hang A Cross On Me” is my favourite track from them of all time, and I can’t believe it was saved for the deluxe edition. I’ll also say, I do like how the bonus tracks really feel like an extension to the album, not just an addendum.

The EP trilogy is the era of Nine Inch Nails I was first properly introduced to, so of course it’s my favourite era. Not The Actual Events is probably the release I listen to the least, but when I do, I’m always pleasantly surprised by its quality. Though it has its ups and downs in energy, it’s peak “creepy textural NIN”, like The Downward Spiral from an emptier, post apocalyptic world. The side B of the album also reversed versions of “Hurt”, “The Downward Spiral” and “Reptile”, all from The Downward Spiral.

I honestly don’t have a ton to say about this album. Not that I don’t love it, I really do, I kinda just think it speaks for itself. Is great, wild, crunchy a little camp and a lot of fun. I love this edition too, along with the gatefold that all copies have, the gold lettering on the cover is gold embossed, and both discs are unique from each other, and incredibly cool and incredibly fitting for the album’s vibes and visuals.

Speaking of multiple discs, this edition also has an extra disc of demos. Most are previously released on King Gizzard’s various Demos compilations, but it’s still an interesting listen. Especially since most of the demos are songs that didn’t end up on Nonagon Infinity, it gives you a taste of how Murder Of The Universe, Gumboot Soup and possibly even Flying Microtonal Banana had their origins in this album.

Splitting my thoughts as the EP is split:

Thee Oh Sees - I don’t know much about these tracks. They seem to be possibly live in studio re-recordings of tracks found on John Dwyer’s semi-solo albums Dog Poison and Castlemania. As they’re recorded with the full band, they’re well worth checking out, even if you’re familiar with the originals, they’re all totally reinvented. They’re worth checking out anyway, even if you haven’t heard the originals.

Total Control - I know even less about this side. I really only know them from this EP. But I’m glad they’re on it, they’re equally as cool as Thee Oh Sees here. They jump between more straightforward punk, and very intense post-punk/rock. It almost gives you the full album experience in only 8 minutes.

I don’t even remember buying this, it’s just been in my collection for so long. I do love all their albums, but I found and fell in love with them from live performances, so it makes sense that I went for the album that’s both live, and a sort of greatest hits record. Really though, the version of “us v them” was more than enough to make it worthwhile.

I’ll also be using that spin the wheel website to randomly select albums if I’m not itching for any album in particular. First offering is Floating Coffin, the last of Thee Oh Sees’ “classic lineup”, with Petey Dammit!, Mike Shoun, Brigid Dawson and John Dwyer + live member Lars Finberg. It really feels like the culmination of all this band’s sounds, heavy riffs, off kilter songwriting, JPD’s entire vocal range, it’s a great starting point for the band’s run from 2008-2013. To me, it also hints a little towards what the current lineup would do, it’s like 10% more progressive than anything they’d done before. It’s been too long since I’ve dived into this album, it grows on me every time I listen.