#various failures

SWANS // LOVE WILL SAVE YOU [LOVE WILL SAVE YOU 12″ PROMO, 1991]

Song of the Day

Title: Blind Artist: Swans Album: Various Failures Year: 1999 Country: UK

This is not my first go-round with fermentation. I’ve made beer for several years, and have made sauerkraut intermittently in a crock. I’ve never had good luck with it in a jar, the way that everyone the heck else seems to be able to, so I’m trying it again.

This time I feel like it was doomed from the get-go, but I’m soldiering on. The cabbage I used was slightly older (I’ve been planning this for a long time), and may not have had as much moisture to give up. I went through with it anyway, keeping it under the brine with more ease by adding water to the thing, which is what the sources i’m using (Jonathon Sawyer’s new book The Power of Sour, about which more in a moment, and Sandor Katz’s The Art of Fermentation). So far it seems neither good nor bad, but it also doesn’t seem like it’s moving. I’ll keep an eye on it and the next time I write one of these fermentation updates there should be a consensus on what’s going on.

Also inspired by The Power of Sour, and the need to make Christmas presents, I have started vinegars. I have a bunch of them working, and I’ll go forward from these test batches. I have two different kinds of red wine vinegar* - a cabernet sauvignon and a tempranillo, because those two varietals are pretty far apart in terms of flavor, and I wanted to know what the final effect on the vinegar was of the varietal it started as.

There’s also three apple vinegars in process. Sawyer’s book suggests an apple wine vinegar, where clarified apple juice is fortified with some sugar to convert to wine, which then ferments further into a vinegar that he describes as being similar to champagne vinegar. I’m willing to try it. I also have hard cider vinegar working in the same way as the wine vinegars, and, since I’m an idiot and bought some soft apple cider instead of apple juice**, I threw some sugar into it and put it in there as well. Who knows how that’s going to turn out.

In a stranger turn of events, I started a cucumber vinegar, using vodka to fortify the cucumber juice. I presume that the vodka is there because the cucumber itself has very little acidity***, so it has a much higher chance of spoiling before it converts its sugars to alcohol. In any event, I am excited about the vinegar, and also excited to report that cucumber juice is quite tasty, and is a really attractive shade of green.

Inspired by these unfermented fruit vinegars (the apple juice and the cucumber, that is), I also realized that this would be a noble calling for some grapes I had lying around in huge quantities in the fridge. So I juiced them, and mixed them with some sugar (a bit more than the apple wine vinegar) to set them on their way. I don’t have anything riding on this one, I’m just curious about the idea of vinegaring all the fruits****.

And, since The Power of Sour is Jonathon Sawyer’s book, and the first vinegar I ever had from his hands was a craft beer vinegar, I also got some Edmund Fitzgerald (which is, now and always, my favorite beer) beer working into vinegar, and am excited about the results.

So it’s all in there now, happily becoming a much tastier thing (well, except for the apple cider and the Edmund Fitzgerald, both of which will be useful but not necessarily an improvement on their natural state), and I will keep this updated as to how it all goes, as well as some future fermentation projects, and some meat-curing experiments that are coming up.

* I’m not super-into white wine vinegar, pretty much limiting its use to times when red wine would discolor whatever I’m putting it into. Even then, distilled vinegar, rice vinegar and (my favorite) cane vinegar are all the same color, so I really never think about it. I also have some white balsamic vinegar, and have on occasion used champagne vinegar. This last has inspired me to try making a prosecco vinegar, since prosecco is basically my favorite wine.

** believe me when I tell you it was a genuine, bone-headed mistake.

*** as opposed to apples, say

Some “failure” of a greatest hits compilation, Various Failures manages to assemble the most powerful, unearthly creatures from Gira and Co’s gothic days into an immense and comprehensive double album. Grotesque and abhorrent, handsomely moody and (as always with Swans) at times tender and frail; Various Failures doesn’t just document Swans’ gothic era within a single package, but stands to simultaneously confirm their tectonic achievements as pivotal movers in art-rock and post-rock.

A compilation from Swans was never going to be simple, nor haphazardly done, and this record is just as meticulous as expected. Such is the effectiveness of Various Failures’ arrangement that these tracks feel remastered and fresh despite the majority having already seen release. ‘Miracle of Love’ breathlessly suits its role as an imperfect opener, opening up a new appreciation and giving itself more impact than it had on White Light From the Mouth of Infinity. And this is much of the case throughout Various Failures - if any album perfectly summarises the importance of track listing on how the listener hears a track, this is it. Various Failures feels like an alternate reality where all the Swans side projects are one, where the best high intensity points of Love of Life and White Light combine with the better acoustic cuts off of the World of Skin project for a whole that has less excess than any of those individual records. Even the more testing Jarboe-heavy cuts feel immeasurably easier to digest in the context of this record, especially with the exquisite ‘(-)’ interludes of Love of Life breaking up the first disc.

What is another of the most impressive aspects of Various Failures is how well it incorporates tracks that previously wouldn’t rank so well in the Swans discography. While Love of Life and White Light are seen as containing some of Swans’ greatest material, The Burning World certainly isn’t, and the World of Skin and Michael Gira side-projects aren’t held in such high regard either. Yet, within Various Failures tracks such as ‘I Remember Who You Are’ and ‘God Damn The Sun’ fit pretty seamlessly in with the earth-shattering likes of ‘Love Will Save You’, ‘Her’ and ‘Better Than You’. Combine this with covers on the second disc, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ and ‘Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes’, and Various Failures fully covers gothic Swans’ bases. Alternative versions depending on release shake up the track-list a bit, but the overall conclusions are the same – Swans’ unrivalled magnificence and reverberating significance is plain, and Various Failures is here to showcase it.

While many may dissect Swans’ discography and segregate their phases into the no wave-influenced, the odyssic gothic folk, the current post-rock depths and the uniqueness of Soundtracks of the Blind, Various Failures makes their sounds seem far less separate. It patches up and makes clear their artistic progression in their pursuit of the imperfect. It has the unrelenting heaviness of Filth, the extended repetition of To Be Kind, the unerringly creepy interludes of Soundtracks, and the overarching gothic-ness of their early 1990s work. Broad, thorough and celebratory, it’s a truly excellent collection of tracks that cements their reputation as one of the 20th century’s most important bands.