Swans discography listen 14/? | LOVE OF LIFE (1992)

This album solves my issues with White Light from the Mouth of Infinity to add only more. I don’t mean that like I hate this album, this has some insanely good individual tracks. While I did think the accessibility of last album could be kind of jarring for Swans, this album sinked further into bleakness and really leaned on it more which I appreciated. However… interludes? And like… 6 of them? That’s just too much. ... read more

this is pee pee. this is doo doo. this is poopy poo poo. poopty scoop, scoop-diddy-whoop, whoop-di-scoop-di-poop, poop-di-scoopty, scoopty-whoop, whoopity-scoop, whoop-poop, poop-diddy, whoop-scoop, poop, poop, scoop-diddy-whoop, whoop-diddy-scoop, whoop-diddy-scoop, poop. i feel like immanuel kant rn.

This is some nice ass vocal jazz, Frank Sinatra is the goat. I like how some of the songs lyrics build up to one metaphor which the song is based around; I remember there was one about love and cocaine and I thought that was cool.

I was just scrolling and listening through the AOTYs on this site… and a big genre up until maybe like 1970 is jazz. Like… very big. I’m on 1954 and even I’m already getting kind of tired of the big band stuff, so it was quite surprising for me to be hit and reminded with how much I truly love jazz on the first track, with equally good solos, a really nice tone, very smooth production, and a small band setting. This album is fucking incredible. Clifford Brown is the ... read more

This is the stupidest fucking thing i’ve heard in recent memory, but I was genuinely in tears during “.Spitters” because the first half of the song actually goes kinda hard and then the head shake sound effect played and I just lost it.

While the Afro-Cuban percussion and the overall production of the album sound quite nice, the repetitive nature of the album fails to keep my interest all the way through. While this is often see as Dizzy’s magnum opus, he surely released better music in the later 1950s.

Swans discography listen 13/? | WHITE LIGHT FROM THE MOUTH OF INFINITY (1991)

“I was self-deluded, confident, and blind”

This album is basically what happens when you take The Burning World, keep the accessibility, give the creative control back to Gira and Jarboe, and crank the gothic elements up.

Now I don’t know if this is a hot take, but while I love this album (Swans has never dropped a bad album), it’s not one of my favorites. I don’t know if this sounds ... read more

This is just beautiful beautiful vocal jazz. The mix especially on Chet Baker’s already fantastic vocals is groundbreaking, it sounds so smooth and clear. The only gripe I have is that after a while, songs can become pretty repetitive, but I didn’t dislike anything I heard. This is a really good album; easy-going too.

An interesting album which started promising… but, man, after listening through a bunch of jazz albums for top ten aotys, this does not stand out.

Swans discography listen 12/? | ANONYMOUS BODIES IN AN EMPTY ROOM (1990)

The only real issue was the sound quality. Gira was almost mixed too low, and even though not by much, it’s just kinda irritating. One tick up man, please sound engineers 😭😭😭 Jarboe killed it though, her songs were awesome.

Thelonious Monk is one of the most interesting figures in jazz, an intensely interesting and energetic man. This album, however, was not it. It sounded like he had to fulfill a contractual obligation and was phoning it in. The music just sounds tired, like I could just nap to it. Even the fantastic Art Blakey and Max Roach are both boring on this album, AND THEY ARE LITERALLY ART BLAKEY AND MAX ROACH. This album is just boring… not horrible, but boring. This is admittedly not one of his ... read more

I do not at all want to like disrespect Peggy Lee or anything lol, but this album was just kinda meh. She’s a good singer but the instrumental isn’t very lively, the vibraphone when it does appear feels more like a gimmick. It’s listenable, but not really that great. Do check it out though, it is pretty.

This is definitely a step down from “Masterpieces”, at least for me. It’s overall less ambitious; while “Masterpieces” fleshed out its tracks more and set a more consistent uneasy mood, this album is just kinda all over the place. The performances are good and all, incredible drum solo on the intro, but asides from that, it’s only good and that’s it.

If I told you to picture a big band, you and I would probably get a similar image. It’s a very stereotypical, “plain”, and “safe” style of jazz. Now, imagine if you pictured big band but it was recorded in hell. This is literally just scary big band. New jazz genre just droppped 🔥 The album itself is good, too short tho.

At the end of the day, this is almost a stupid kind of fun and that’s all it really is too. Obviously “Good Morning” and the title tracks go OUTRAGEOUSLY HARD, but the rest bored me. “Moses” was aggressively stupid though. That track 💀.

Bird and Diz is an alright album. The performances here are pretty good, even if I feel like Charlie Parker has had better solos in the past (I never really explored Dizzy Gillespie though). The main issue here is just the quality of these recordings. Like, it's very clearly outdated, so much so a remaster would be an impossible. It isn't too grating for me, but it's clear on some songs.

Not one of the best Billie Holiday albums I've heard, the instrumentals themselves are not as special as usual, but she still has a great performance on this album, and "Blue Moon" is clearly a classic.

The first album wasn't great already, this was downright bad. So inoffensive it almost becomes offensive.

“Masterpieces” is correct, wow this was a good album. Every performance on here was passionate, my favorites being: all of “Mood Indigo”, the ending to “Sophisticated Lady”, that suspended note during “The Tattooed Bride” (8:49-9:02), and all of “Solitude”. One of the greatest jazz projects I’ve ever heard.

Swans discography listen 11/? | THE BURNING WORLD (1989)

The hate for this one is so confusing for me. I could understand hating this when it was first released, it completely abandons the band’s noise rock elements… but it’s Swans. An experimental band who experiments, and people are losing their shit over a folk album?

I understand the production on this one isn’t the greatest; Gira had to give nearly all creative control to producer Bill Laswell, on top of having ... read more