G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END!—Godspeed You! Black Emperor

The latest Godspeed LP feels significant for several reasons. With its release, the band’s post-revival albums now outnumber their original run of three, solidifying this second phase of their discography as un-ignorable. The album also marks Godspeed’s return to shortwave radio samples and field recordings—largely absent from their music since 2000’s Lift Your Skinny Fists…. Most importantly, it’s been heralded as a return to the impossibly high form of their early work.

That last point is both dubious and subjective—and I’d contest that the maligned “Luciferian Towers” and Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress are far from the duds naysayers would have you believe. Asunder… is especially overlooked, replicating the fury of Godspeed’s live sets in a way that no other studio effort has quite managed.

What G_d’s Pee does do is interrupt the one-upmanship (and one-notemanship) of their discography. Revival albums have been incrementally louder and more bombastic—at the expense of nuance, variety, and that tremulous half-hope that suffuses the old stuff. Many listeners like a band’s discography to feel in conversation with itself; elaborating, contradicting and offering something fresh with every release. It’s no wonder the fatigue had set in for those guys.

G_d’s Pee touches on new territories and unexplored moods. It’s the first LP they’ve released that feels properly post-Bush (don’t ask me how—it just does). Considering Dubya stepped down in 2009, that’s a long sulk to come out of. The album responds to contemporary concerns, feeling right at home in a world where the response we must offer to global health emergencies is to sit around in our pants for a year. Committed to “waiting for the end”, as Godspeed put it, we can only look with bemused distance and seek a unifying light in the darkening hours of our species.  

The band still don’t arrange pieces with the intricacy they used to—but their grander and more direct recent style rouses without being hokey. You may have long dismissed Godspeed as ‘crescendo-core’—but that reductive take is informed by twenty years of shite imitators. This band remain among the best in their field and, twenty-five years down the line, are yet to significantly compromise.

G_d’s Pee is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Lore City—Alchemical Task

Lore City’s Alchemical Task is a subdued album, woven close in spirit to Leeds duo Hawthonn’s 2018 work Red Goddess. In fact, Lore City share so much of that group’s folkloric DNA, it’s hard to believe they’re from Portland. They sound more like people who wound down from some Cornish side-road, having time-travelled from the English Civil War. Their sensibility feels constructed from pagan apocrypha which predates the existence of their country.

This is most explicitly suggested by floor-tom heartbeats which suffuse the album’s first half with military regularity. Civil War writer William Barriffe described these drums as “the voice of the Commander”, a sentiment which can still be applied outside of a battlefield; they’re drums which drive inexorably forward, and dictate the pace of the album. Likewise, when they’re removed altogether, for final tracks ‘Beyond Done’ and ‘Don’t Be Afraid’, the effect is startling—an album which has marched itself into thick fog to begin a slow disintegration into silence.

Historicity is also pretended at by dreamlike vocals, and a par-for-the course soak of reverb. These hymnal elements are still successful, serving as a pleasant contrast to Alchemical Task’s medieval motorik, but they’re not quite as unique—and at points become dream-pop window-dressing. At their best they imitate the (inimitable) Jarboe, as on ‘Beacon of Light’, which places emphasis on vocalist Laura Mariposa Williams’ wonderful lower register while thinning things out to a stage whisper.

Truth be said, Alchemical Task is difficult to write about—it generates most of its interest from an ineffable place. You can stand and watch the sea for hours at a time, but nobody wants to compare waves against one another. Lore City have created an album which surfs its own hypnotic shivers; into which time and sense evaporate and all you can do is listen, dumbfounded. Quite how everything works so well is a mystery. Perhaps it really is magic.

Alchemical Task is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Swans — Leaving Meaning

Since their 1983 debut, Filth, Swans have reinvented themselves more than perhaps any other band. Frontman Michael Gira has rallied multiple line-ups through multiple decades. The band has explored punishing no-wave, gothic country, and transcendent post-rock. But what has always remained consistent are Swans' themes of violence, power, lust and religion.

Leaving Meaning retains these themes, but scales back the bombast that post-reunion Swans have come to embody. Don't get it twisted: the album still, at points, sounds gargantuan. 'Sunfucker' is a vast and brutal track which could go toe-to-toe with any of the band's most extreme. But it's blessed with the delicacy of Gira's side-project, The Angels of Light.

Leaving Meaning is a more reflective and personal album than its immediate predecessors, too. Gira focuses on transitioning between life and death, rising to the face of God in his old age. 'Amnesia', a classic Swans track, has been re-recorded to stunning effect. Lyrics are, for the first time in decades, specific and scrutable — but they are being delivered by an older and wiser voice. The album is soaked in the past, but squinting at an uncertain future.

Likely to lose Swans some of their post-reunion fans, this album may end up a victim of its own subtlety. It imposes very little, with a greatly reduced focus on crescendos, riffs and walls of noise. But far from a deliberate rejection of these facets, Leaving Meaning is another evolution from a band whose history is defined by them. And it can proudly cap one of the most colourful contemporary discographies in the Western canon.

Leaving Meaning is available to purchase here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Swans new album, leaving meaning., will be released worldwide October 25th, 2019 on Young God Records/Mute. Formats include 2X LP, 2CD, as well as download and stream. "It's Coming It's Real" features choral vocals by Anna and Maria von Hausswolff. Pre-order signed copies through Young God Records - http://bit.ly/2lFLeTq Everywhere else - http://smarturl.it/SWANS-LM Swans will tour in 2020.