Swans
They certainly didn’t seem like contenders at first. No band before them had ever been so completely and deliberately devoid of such life-affirming qualities as humor and beauty. And no lyricist had ever spelled it out quite as flatly as Michael Gira: “Use sex for control / Use power for power / Use money for cruelty / Use hate for freedom…Sex, power, money, hate,” he choked out on Swans’ full-length debut, Filth. Just the brute force of it made it impossible to sustain.
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It’s easy to ascribe Gira and Jarboe’s endurance to the fact that they’re lovers, but I suspect that might make it more difficult, not less–lack of separation between artistic life and personal life has contributed to burnout in many a great talent. Like John Doe and Exene Cervenka, Gira and Jarboe smear their relationship all over their records, but with Swans, we have a “before” picture, and Gira seems both a much happier man and a much more complex artist with Jarboe than he ever was without her. It’s possible that their relationship prodded them to hold the line and stay honest artistically because the stakes were higher, the way marriage is said to prod couples to resolve arguments that might have broken them up otherwise. However they managed to avoid the crash of brittle egos that’s been the final sound of many a fine band, it’s something to be admired.
