September 17, 2001

The Angels Of Light : How I Loved You

Michael Gira's post-Swans return.

7 / 10 Michael Gira has always been a man of extremes. In the mid-?80s, his
band Swans were one of the loudest in the world, then shortly afterwards, with their ?Burning World? LP, one of the saddest and most epic. His new band The Angels Of Light may periodically fly, but they still carry much of the same heavy baggage.
With their dark intimations, Gira and his angels are, basically, Godspeed You Black Clothing. Like a dark meeting place for a tryst between Nick Cave and Sonic Youth
, they take a funereal subject matter (eg ?My Suicide?), and expand it over beautifully arranged and very huge spaces
of time.

It is, in the grand, knobbly German church manner, gothic. "New York City girls", pronounces Gira, "scattered crimson pearls". It?s also not shy of working a problem out over a long space of time (there are two 11-minute efforts here). The fact that ex-Bad Seeds man Kid Congo Powers is here too will probably also be
no surprise.

Excesses all, certainly. But surely part of the point ? a man
of extremes will obviously also
not be one to do anything by halves.

John Robinson