Style: Experimental music, ambient, folk, spoken word, post rock?, country?, noise, insanity
Primary Emotions/Themes: Mental instability, chaos, peace
Thoughts: I've been dreading this for over six months. I've had this record sitting in my "need to listen to" pile since March... I haven't been able to bring myself to listen to it. Today was an especially draining day and my mind is completely blown to smithereens, so why not make things infinitely worse by trying to tackle Swans largest and most complex album.
Let that sink in... this is Swans most musically diverse, musically challenging, deep, and very likely strangest album. This is Swans were talking about... what the fuck kind of album is this that I can make those kind of statements about it?
To start off I don't know if album is the correct term for these four LP's. Soundtracks for the Blind is indeed a collection of songs (a shit ton of them), and it does indeed have all the characteristics of an album... but somehow it feels like more. The scope is too large to be called an album, its too broad. Is soundtrack a more appropriate term? Maybe, but whatever it is, it goes way beyond anything that would be considered "normal."
To start things out the album is actually quite pleasant. The first side of the first LP is largely instrumental and non-offensive in terms of its musical delivery. Michael's gentle voice comes in from time to time and the music ebbs and flows through much of the gentler sound that the band had been exploring at the time.It's quite the pleasant listen and is a bit misleading in terms of where the band end up.
Flip the record over and we start to get into.... things. The first few minutes we are berated by someone.. or something telling us how fucked up we are. This entity surely knows us better than we know ourselves and is not shy about telling us all the things that we've done wrong or how much we hide from other people. A bit unsettling to say the least.
Jarboe screams onto the record a few songs later with an almost shouted track that mixes country with noise rock. Its so grating on the ears I usually have to turn it down. It's physically uncomfortable to listen to. Being Jarboe, she still gets plenty of applause at the end of the song. To this day I don't know if this was a live recording or something that was stitched together in the studio.
What comes next is even stranger. A swirling mix of feedback noise and what sounds like capacitors overloading. There are no guitars, or anything that would resemble musical instruments. Somehow though this ends up sounding musical, in a deranged sort of way. To drive the track home a child starts rambling on different topics as the ambience fades into... something else. I don't know what it is and my brain can't fully wrap itself around it. It's just... there.
Wall of noise aside this concludes our first excursion with the Soundtracks for the Blind. Swans never really cared about any kind of rule, and they gave up the ghost with this one. Nothing sounded like this before, and no one can replicate this. Not even Swans. Buckle up, part 2 gets stranger.
Written October 29th 2023
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