Choosing to extinguish the band name under which
Gira and
Jarboe had worked together for so long must not have been an easy step, but when they decided to end
Swans with one last studio release as a prelude to a farewell tour, they did so with what turned out to be their biggest and best album ever. Interestingly, the double-disc, two-and-a-half-hour long
Soundtracks makes no pretensions at being a uniform creation like
The White Album or
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness;
Gira's own notes indicate the song sources as being from "hand-held cassette recordings to found sounds, to samples, to loops, to finished multitrack recordings," recorded with ten different musicians. Everything from raging electric music in extreme to the gentlest of acoustic strums can be found here, ultimately being a perfect encapsulation of
Swans' sound -- as much as any greatest-hits anthology could ever have been.
"The Helpless Child," the epic-length
Gira-sung piece previewed on
Die Tuer ist Zu, amazingly gets an even more brilliant revision here, while another similarly lengthy track,
"The Sound," at once roars and whispers over its length in a way that early
Swans -- much less many other bands -- could never have done. Other tracks continue
Swans' then-recent practice of mixing random taped conversations with exquisitely arranged performances:
"I Was a Prisoner in Your Skull" is especially noteworthy as the clear forerunner of
Godspeed you Black Emperor!'s entire musical approach.
Jarboe's own tracks are all winners, from the fractured, tempo-shifting techno of
"Volcano" to the howling live version of a solo album track from
Sacrificial Cake,
"Yum-Yab Killers." Ending on the unexpected yet appropriate
"Surrogate Drone," Soundtracks lets
Swans bow out from recording on the highest note possible. ~ Ned Raggett
