This is the 3rd studio album from American noise rock band, Swans. For the past three years since their debut album, Filth, Swans had been hitting their stride as a hard-hitting no-wave and noise rock band in New York City’s underbelly in the 1980s and they were beginning to make a name for themselves. They became enough of a name for a trained jazz and choral vocalist named Jarboe to not only become interested in but obsessed with the band. She came into contact with lead singer, Michael Gira, attended their practice sessions and eventually, after several auditions, she became a member of the band. Her first contribution to Swans would be this album, Greed, where she sings backup vocals, plays keyboard, and starts a turning point away from the heavy, chaotic noise rock to something softer.
The reason why I chose this album to listen to is that my random Wheel of Death compelled me to go forth on my epic quest through the entire, lengthy Swans discography. After I listened to To Be Kind, I knew I had to go down the rabbit hole, which led to me listening to Filth and Soundtracks For The Blind. The former is a fun album and the latter one of my favourite rock albums ever. Cop was not as good as Filth, in my opinion, but it was still an enjoyable, sludgy experience. I may have rose-tinted glasses for Swans because I legitimately felt that they could do no wrong and even though Greed is regarded to be one of the worst Swans albums, I thought it wouldn’t be that bad.
Yeah, it’s that bad. I was dead wrong. The music nerds were very right. While I don’t hate this album by any means, this is a far cry from their previous albums and even their EPs. I understand they were trying to tone down their sound and go softer for this album and this is their long journey to sounding more diverse. This is a band that is going from simply being a fun no-wave band to being one of the greatest rock bands of all time, but clearly there are going to be some bumps in the road before we reach our final destination, if you catch my drift. Greed is clearly one of those bumps.
Production is fairly pedestrian for my tastes, especially compared to Filth. There’s some stereo sound here and there, but that’s about it. I guess it matches the simple songwriting, but when it does break out of its shell with songs that have more going on, the production improves. Vocal mixing is a little spotty, but everyone else sounds fine, luckily.
Composition is in a word, simple, but not necessarily in a good way. Swans have always been a band to repeatedly beat you over the head with one chord or one short melody with tons of noisy goodness, but this has been scaled back as well. I like the pianos on this record, but I feel like everyone else takes a backseat in comparison except for a couple key oases (plural of oasis) like Stupid Child with its bass lines and dinking percussion. The trumpets on top of the whipping noise hellscape that is the closer, Money is Flesh, are a nice cherry on top to rip off a layer of skin with every hit. Structure is where problems lie, however. This album doesn’t do much with album structure at all and the song structure bugs me the most, especially with the fadeouts…for nearly every single song! With Heaven, the song just abruptly ends. These songs sound like they don’t have true endings and I find myself desperately craving a big finish!
Lyrics are just early Swans doing Swans with the same melodrama, except they shoot themselves in the foot this time around. Michael Gira’s vocals are unfortunately scaled back as well, most worryingly in his emotion. Michael Gira’s vocals don’t really read to me as dejected or even angry, but more bored or heading some pretentious slam poetry session at some artsy bar or cafe (that last part might be one of the circles of hell for me). Jarboe is pretty good in her appearances though. As for lyrical content, it’s basically the same as Cop but with less dejection and more dominatrix style enjoyment of suffering. This may be an interesting theme, but Greed just doesn’t take it in an interesting direction, which is super frustrating.
Good thing Swans put Time Is Money on the streaming version of this album as an EP bonus to wake you up! I never thought a Swans album could be boring, especially in their exciting no-wave punk era, but this is just plain uninteresting. If it wasn’t for songs like Stupid Child and Money is Flesh adding a jolt of energy or emotion to this thing, I would’ve hated this record completely. Greed is not completely worthless, but it takes a little extra digging to get those diamonds compared to their previous efforts up until this point.
I’m giving this a Light 5/10
FAVOURITE TRACKS: Fool, Nobody, Stupid Child, Money Is Flesh
LEAST FAVOURITE TRACK: Greed
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