Swans - Children of God

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Because it's the soundtrack of my life.
Because it rocks a dialectic like no other record.
Because it's pitch black funny and laugh out loud serious.
Because before it Swans lacked warmth and after it they lacked fire.
Because Michael and Jarboe's voices are beyond human.
Because.

― Anti-Pope Consortium (noodle vague), Thursday, 21 July 2005 08:16 (twenty years ago)

because mark s voted it his album of the year in the nme '87 poll

― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 21 July 2005 08:25 (twenty years ago)

I think the first time I ever heard 'Blind Love' remains my single most terrifying listening experience. Seriously, that bit where the guitars come in almost gave me a fucking heart attack. They way they control the tension there is just breathtaking. Awesome album.

― NickB (NickB), Thursday, 21 July 2005 08:27 (twenty years ago)

also i would have voted it my album of the year in '87. the opening transition from "new mind" to "in my garden" would be sufficient in itself to justify that.

― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 21 July 2005 08:29 (twenty years ago)

"You said all of my life/would be in vain/if I gave up anything/I knew to be true/or a provable lie." So witty, so bleak. They really did own that year.

― Anti-Pope Consortium (noodle vague), Thursday, 21 July 2005 08:30 (twenty years ago)

awesome. so dark and beautiful.

i so need to find this on cd one of these days.

saw them on the tour for this album.

unbelieveabley intense.

― mark e (mark e), Thursday, 21 July 2005 08:30 (twenty years ago)

I was about 19 when I bought this, I took it home, listened to the first side, the world caved in, I shat myself and I quickly hid it away.

It must have been a good six months before I had the courage to even put it on again, not sure if I'll ever truly get to the bottom of it, if it indeed has one.

Nevertheless, it's an astonishing record, as is Greed/Holy Money.

― mzui (mzui), Thursday, 21 July 2005 08:34 (twenty years ago)

I remember reading reviews of the Children of God tour. Lots of mad stuff about people throwing up due the noise and reverting to stuffing cigarette butts in their ears to try and find respite from the volume.

I've got the song 'Children of God' going round in my head now, and even now it's giving me the willies.

― NickB (NickB), Thursday, 21 July 2005 08:38 (twenty years ago)

'Like A Drug' still ravishes me.

Bought C.o.G for my younger brother for his 16th birthday.

― stevo (stevo), Thursday, 21 July 2005 08:51 (twenty years ago)

Thinking about to it, this record bears pretty good comparison with the first Comus album - the darker-than-night vibe, the neo-pagan overtones, the contrasting voices, sometimes scary, sometimes seductive, often both.

― NickB (NickB), Thursday, 21 July 2005 08:55 (twenty years ago)

better voices though - the singing in comus always put me off them.

― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 21 July 2005 08:56 (twenty years ago)

The singing on Comus does feel a bit costume drama. And like I said above, the singing on CoG is unimpeachable. There are similarities in the arrangements too though.

― Anti-Pope Consortium (noodle vague), Thursday, 21 July 2005 08:57 (twenty years ago)

"Because before it Swans lacked warmth and after it they lacked fire"

No way, there was plenty of fire to come!

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 21 July 2005 08:59 (twenty years ago)

thank you to original poster. thanks.

― cs appleby (cs appleby), Thursday, 21 July 2005 09:00 (twenty years ago)

(xpost x 2)

well, lindsay cooper was in comus and appears on CoG (and georgie born also turns up on CoG) so there is a link.

― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 21 July 2005 09:00 (twenty years ago)

I was stretching a point for rhetorical effect, but I do think this was the perfect balance between the stuff before and the stuff after.

― Anti-Pope Consortium (noodle vague), Thursday, 21 July 2005 09:01 (twenty years ago)

(x post to scott)

― Anti-Pope Consortium (noodle vague), Thursday, 21 July 2005 09:04 (twenty years ago)

they kind of lost me after that, with The Burning World etc.

what do we think of the Skin albums which came out in parallel with Swans releases at the time?

― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 21 July 2005 09:06 (twenty years ago)

Wow, I probably didn't know who Lindsay Cooper was the last time I looked at the sleevenotes. Didn't realise at all that she was on CoG.

― NickB (NickB), Thursday, 21 July 2005 09:07 (twenty years ago)

I didn't pay much attention to Skin at the time because what I heard felt like half-fat Swans, so to speak. I'm listening to anything Gira/Jarboe I can find now.

― Anti-Pope Consortium (noodle vague), Thursday, 21 July 2005 09:15 (twenty years ago)

It's the curse of Bill Laswell.

― mzui (mzui), Thursday, 21 July 2005 09:15 (twenty years ago)

I love the skin stuff. even the last album is great. first nick drake cover i ever heard. noodle, i actually know what you mean about CoG and the fire. But Love Of Life and White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity are two of my favorite records ever. And I love the stuff AFTER that as well. I like it all, i guess. Though, I don't listen to the very early stuff like I used to when I was a noizy teen.

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 21 July 2005 10:02 (twenty years ago)

My two heroes from my youth who have never put out a bad record: Gira & Lawrence Hayward. (even the burning world is better than people remember. it had some of their best songs too.)

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 21 July 2005 10:11 (twenty years ago)

World of Skin's Ten Songs For Another World is pretty fantastic. You need to track down the original, as Gira's reissue of that period has a number of flaws e.g. the three opening songs are sequenced to run into each other on the original, but on Various Failures they don't appear in order. I'm not 100% sure, but I think two pretty good tracks from Ten Songs didn't get reissued at all.

I think I always say this, but the live Feel Good Now reprises much of Children of God with vastly improved (or at least much more powerful) sound. Its version of Sex God Sex just kills the album version.

― dlp9001, Thursday, 21 July 2005 10:15 (twenty years ago)

i think the only thing i wanted to keep off burning world was the blind faith cover.

but jarboe's reading of "the man i love" on the first skin album is one of the best there is.

― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 21 July 2005 10:16 (twenty years ago)

there is some beautiful stuff on those first two skin albums. in a 4ad vein. great production and sound (true of everything they did except for the american copies of burning world, which sounded kinda cruddy. the u.k. singles from that album sound infinitely better.)

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 21 July 2005 12:08 (twenty years ago)

Seeing a Children Of God review in 1987 in a music publication I could read at the local brand supermarket in the burb I grew up in as a kid made me a fan of that publication for a while, as it turned me on to so many other great things. The publication? Spin magazine.

That same issue, they would have a column dedicated to Spacemen 3 and Tall Dwarfs.

It's almost tear inducing how the once great and might have fallen.

― donut ferry (donut), Thursday, 21 July 2005 16:18 (twenty years ago)

mighty, even

― donut ferry (donut), Thursday, 21 July 2005 16:19 (twenty years ago)

Swans were good. But what the fuck was their deal? Miserable fuckers.

― Colostomy Bag, Thursday, 21 July 2005 16:21 (twenty years ago)

'children of god' live was one of the defining moments of my life.

i love those skin albums, especially the jarboe one. there is also a 12" of 'girl come out' with a solo piano version of gerswin's 'the man i love' that reduces me to tears. the album version is good but this one eclipses it. does anyone know if is this on 'the world of skin' as i'd love to have it on cd.

― stirmonster (stirmonster), Thursday, 21 July 2005 16:26 (twenty years ago)

x-post

the tour for this - one of the best shows I've ever seen
like some BIKER APOCALYPSE

― Paul (scifisoul), Thursday, 21 July 2005 16:26 (twenty years ago)

I love the first half of this album. After "Beautiful Child" ends I stop it because those eight songs are perfect. Everything after it feels like bonus tracks.

― Kitten, the body needs it, the body cries out for Ian Riese-Moraine! (Eastern Ma, Thursday, 21 July 2005 16:51 (twenty years ago)

Seeing them on this tour was a defining moment for me too, definitely. That and the Butthole Surfers (touring Locust Abortion Technician I guess) pretty much blew any lingering Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull cobwebs out of my brain.

Children Of God is still my favourite Swans album, probably one of my faves from that period. A lot of late 80's noise rock is sounding pretty lame to my ears these days (Pussy Galore anyone?), but Swans were on an infinitely more subtle level of humour. They managed to be laugh-out-loud funny and utterly, religiously terrifying at the same time. It's an unsettling combination for sure.

I never realised Lindsay Cooper was on it either! I can't have looked at the sleevenotes since about 1989 which is the reason why I suppose.

Hi Crawford!

― Matt #2 (Matt #2), Thursday, 21 July 2005 17:13 (twenty years ago)

Holy mother of...you mean someone resurrected THIS thread while I was gone? Yikes. Sorry I missed it. What a C.L.A.S.S.I.C.

I saw them live on that tour and they were probably the loudest band I've ever heard in my life.

― Hydrochloric Shaved Weirds (Bimble...), Saturday, 23 July 2005 07:33 (twenty years ago)

Hey Matt,
So you kept that one then? :)

― mzui (mzui), Saturday, 23 July 2005 07:59 (twenty years ago)

Incongruous Swan-spotting as recent as yesterday: http://vassifer.blogs.com/alexinnyc/2005/07/spicily_swannin.html

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Saturday, 23 July 2005 10:51 (twenty years ago)

good photo alex! when i saw them on that tour, his naked ass was about one foot from my face. i was praying he hadn't eaten a curry for his dinner.

― stirmonster (stirmonster), Saturday, 23 July 2005 12:55 (twenty years ago)

Is this the double album that came out around 1986 or 1987? If so, I think I reviewed it for Creem along with a double album by Aretha Franklin, which was also about God. (I had kind of liked their really early stuff, like for instance the debut Swans EP on Labor Records which probably is worth a zillion dollars by now; didn't like Cop and Filth etc so much but then I thought they improved when they went "We Will Rock You" disco with "Time is Money {Bastard}" and "A Screw" etc. But then I didn't get when they started trying to sound pretty. Which was probably dumb of me. At least Scott Seward, who taped me a bunch of their later stuff a couple years ago, says it was. They were quite possibly a big influence on lots of gothic depressive Scandinavian dark beautiful epic metal I love these days. But judging from those tapes Scott sent, they weren't as good as lots of the music they influenced. By which I mean not as beautiful. I am not sure why this is so. In fact maybe it isn't.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 23 July 2005 12:59 (twenty years ago)

it's okay if you like neurosis better, chuck. i understand. you know, gira wanted to get neurosis to back him up on the last swans tour. but they were too busy.

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 23 July 2005 13:38 (twenty years ago)

Because before it Swans lacked warmth and after it they lacked fire.

Startlingly OTM. Although I do believe they regained some fire in their later years.

― Hydrochloric Shaved Weirds (Bimble...), Sunday, 24 July 2005 03:11 (twenty years ago)

My only reason for getting into the Swans was because of the consistency of their album covers... that dollar sign. I took a chance, as PVC was their label at the time, and I picked up the then brand new "Time is Money (Bastard)".. so, I expect something kinda Wax Trax!-ey, maybe darker, but instead I got...

*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM*DRUM
*POW BAM POW BAM DUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDU*

and the occasional "HUNH! HUNH! HUNH! HUNH! HUNH!..." and all the above going on for minutes, and then without warning..

"You Mind is..... sacred".

God, what an excellent song.

My next purchase the next weekend was the "A Screw" 12". This is how I got all my fucking classic rock/heavy stoner jock (i.e. asshole) high school friends into the Swans.. that Westburg guitar solo before the big beat breakdown... they though it was the most awesomely heavy thing they ever heard.. again, these were guys who were only listening to Appetite For Destruction, Outsider, The Joshua Tree, and the Top Gun soundtrack. In retrospect, I felt a little proud. Then I crossed the line when I brought the Coil records the next week...

― donut ferry (donut), Sunday, 24 July 2005 08:08 (twenty years ago)

What everyone said. (I have all sorts of slightly addled reviews on the AMG about the Swans; this album in particular is a treat.)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 24 July 2005 08:15 (twenty years ago)

"in my garden" is a jaw-droppingly beautiful sounding song.

― latebloomer: lazy r people (latebloomer), Sunday, 24 July 2005 10:29 (twenty years ago)

one year passes...

Revival commencing (deservedly)...

An honest to God (pun almost intended) classic. Any version of "Blind Love" is utterly spine-chilling; The version on Kill the Child is particularily good. (Weirdly, you can hear who I believe is Westberg say "S--t!" in the background. Wrong chord, Norm?) And then there's "Blackmail". Jarboe is amazing. Utterly.

And now I have the uncontrollable urge to get some more of those live CDRs...

― J.H. Malerman (xada_hgla), Wednesday, 20 September 2006 19:07 (nineteen years ago)

Funny, the other day I stumbled across a 4 page Swans article I wrote back in '88. Blah blah genius blah blah, Public Castration good, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" bad...

― Edward III (edward iii), Wednesday, 20 September 2006 23:49 (nineteen years ago)

Been listening to Swans quite heavily lately. Children of God is utterly fantastic, but the one I've been spinning the most at the moment is White Light from the Mouth of Infinity. Breathtaking.

― Harpal (harpal), Thursday, 21 September 2006 00:20 (nineteen years ago)

Their version of Love Will Tear Us Apart IS super cringy though, edward.

― disappointing goth fest line-up (orion), Thursday, 21 September 2006 13:43 (nineteen years ago)

Oh my god, that record broke my heart! And not in a "moonbeams and nice dreams" way but in a "how could you you fucking bastards" way... following Children of God with... that thing... ugh.

Now I'm off to add it to the trainwrecks thread...

― Edward III (edward iii), Thursday, 21 September 2006 14:04 (nineteen years ago)

this was one of my most played albums in 88. it's the closest i got to realactual goth. sisters of mercy not counting (obv)

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Thursday, 21 September 2006 14:22 (nineteen years ago)

one year passes...

Honestly I really have gone ahead and flipped over this album all over again almost as though I had never heard it before. I'm on my 4th play of it this weekend, I believe. Probably 6th to 8th play of this since last weekend. I struggled for awhile trying to remember if Dead Can Dance's "Within The Realm..." came out before this or after...I know they were both from 1987. The reason is "Blood & Honey" has instrumentation that sounds just like DCD though I never noticed at the time. [All of a sudden I got "Blood & Honey" in my head at work Friday and cursed myself to hell for not bringing the goddamn CD with me.] I think Children of God must have been first. I looked at the credits and it said Children of God was recorded Feb.-March 1987 and DCD's Within The Realm was recorded April - May 1987. So there you have it.

― Bimble, Sunday, 30 September 2007 07:06 (eighteen years ago)

This is an example of an album I experienced in high school that doesn't seem to date at all. Unthinkable that the Smiths were still recording then. This seems so timeless in comparison.

Also I pulled out Gira's book The Consumer, that was a fabulous book I read ten years ago. He is a very talented writer, if a bit clumsy at times.

― Bimble, Sunday, 30 September 2007 07:09 (eighteen years ago)

And yes, it was the best of Swans, though the I Crawled EP and Soundtracks For the Blind give it a run for its money.

― Bimble, Sunday, 30 September 2007 07:15 (eighteen years ago)

four months pass...

not sure if I'll ever truly get to the bottom of it, if it indeed has one.

truer words ne'er spoken on ilm ^^

great, great album. been spinning it constantly this week.

― stephen, Saturday, 9 February 2008 04:08 (eighteen years ago)

oh no! Some great soul has resurrected this thread besides me! Praise be to Jesus.

― Bimble, Saturday, 9 February 2008 09:29 (eighteen years ago)

Seriously I listen to this sometimes and look out my window at the trees and I feel like I'm 17 again.

― Bimble, Saturday, 9 February 2008 09:29 (eighteen years ago)

yea this album is nuts. i'm just taken to another world when i hear it. i go back and forth but i think this is probably the best work gira's done, and that's saying a whole lot.

― Mark Clemente, Saturday, 9 February 2008 15:42 (eighteen years ago)

Because Michael and Jarboe's voices are beyond human.
^^^yes

― Mark Clemente, Saturday, 9 February 2008 15:44 (eighteen years ago)

i understand why ppl hate on Jarboe sometimes, but she's utterly flawless on this album.

― stephen, Sunday, 10 February 2008 00:45 (eighteen years ago)

production/engineering by Rico Conning of the Lines.

― dan selzer, Sunday, 10 February 2008 01:08 (eighteen years ago)

I have only ever owned the early Swans noise stuff. But I have become friends with Jarboe over the last few years. She's such a trip (in a good way).

She's doing a career makeover right now. Getting really heavy again... it's gonna be cool.

― Nate Carson, Monday, 11 February 2008 09:56 (eighteen years ago)

Later stuff gets pretty damn noisy as well, just in different ways...sometimes MORE noisy, layers of tapes and all kinds of instrumentation.

― dan selzer, Monday, 11 February 2008 19:52 (eighteen years ago)

one month passes...

"Come into my heart sweet lord/come into my heart/I am open/I am torn apart/I am naked/and I am impure/I am sexless/I am foul/and I am ignorant/I am hateful/forgive me lord/forgive me lord/come in/come on in/praise god/praise the lord..."

He's the only one who could sing these lyrics with just the right amount of irony. I couldn't get this damn song out of my head earlier this week.

― Bimble Is Still More Goth Than You, Sunday, 6 April 2008 09:33 (seventeen years ago)

ten months pass...

listened to this for the first time ever last night, slightly stoned. a few minutes into "new mind" and i was completely enraptured, and slightly frightened. it made me think of those cheap 80s psychological horror films that have just the right amount of camp irony to stop you from completely freaking out. been walking around chanting "let the light come in/damn you to hell" in my head all morning

anyway, i was trying to remember where i had heard the name rico conning, and it turns out he remixed depeche mode, coil and erasure! guess i should check out the lines

― rio (r1o natsume), Friday, 27 February 2009 13:30 (seventeen years ago)

rico conning is / was a god.

― stirmonster, Friday, 27 February 2009 13:36 (seventeen years ago)

Glad to see this thread pop up! I heard "Sex God Sex" on shuffle this morning and it was glorious.

― ilxor, Friday, 27 February 2009 20:09 (seventeen years ago)

donut's post about the "Time is Money (Bastard)" 12" made me wanna put that one on again. Wonderful, sososo good.

I tend to prefer the earlier Swans stuff, but Children has some of my favorite songs of theirs ("Trust Me" oh my god). I have a copy of Soundtracks for the Blind I have yet to play.

― Ivan, Friday, 27 February 2009 20:54 (seventeen years ago)

DO IT

― StanM, Friday, 27 February 2009 20:56 (seventeen years ago)

SFTB is spotty, i think, upon repeated listens. but the good stuff on it is incredible

― mark cl, Friday, 27 February 2009 20:57 (seventeen years ago)

THE SEX IN YOUR SOUL WILL DAMN YOU TO HELL

― only the beginning of the firestorm (latebloomer), Friday, 27 February 2009 21:18 (seventeen years ago)

I've been having a bit of a Swans fest myself lately because Michael Gira is playing here next week and I'm seriously considering going, despite not following anything he's done since the first Angels of Light album. I was delighted that someone nominated Children of God for the best goth album poll we were trying to get started.

Soundtracks For The Blind is really incredible stuff...kindof sucks you into its own black hole.

― Sleep Tundra (Bimble Is Still More Goth Than You), Friday, 27 February 2009 21:18 (seventeen years ago)

yea i've been playing a lot of angels of light recently, don't know why. that first one ('new mother') is outstanding, i think their best, esp. the tune "angels of light." i also was listening the m gira/ d matz "what we did," it's pretty awesome. there's not a single album that gira's done that doesn't have at least a few awesome pieces.

― mark cl, Friday, 27 February 2009 21:32 (seventeen years ago)

Post-Angels solo shows have been Incredible

― bear, bear, bear, Friday, 27 February 2009 21:41 (seventeen years ago)

I have a copy of Soundtracks for the Blind I have yet to play.

Well come on, what are you waiting for??? It's fucking great!

― ilxor, Friday, 27 February 2009 23:03 (seventeen years ago)

one year passes...

THIS IS MY REGRET ...GET OUTTA MY HEAD!!!

― fuckd and bombd (r1o natsume), Saturday, 12 June 2010 12:26 (fifteen years ago)

three months pass...

I just figured out that some of the songs on the Children of God/World of Skin reissue are edited down and pretty severely remixed. "Our Love Lies" especially.

/swans reissues woe

― Brad Nelson (BradNelson), Saturday, 9 October 2010 17:49 (fifteen years ago)

Oh, of course, it's the version from Love Will Tear Us Apart. I've avoided that EP for years.

― Brad Nelson (BradNelson), Saturday, 9 October 2010 17:59 (fifteen years ago)

yeah, the greed reissue is missing a track too

I leonardo'd the original vinyl mix at one point

― vehemence is mine (Edward III), Saturday, 9 October 2010 18:05 (fifteen years ago)

two years pass...

Greatest Christian Rock album of all time?

― frogbs, Monday, 29 October 2012 21:11 (thirteen years ago)

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