"The Burning World": C/D?

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I don't think that there is a thread about this, but maybe there is.

This album seems to be a pretty contentious entry in the Swans discography, which is on the one hand hilarious since it's one of their most accessible, and on the other hand completely understandable, since it's one of their most accessible. I read the review on allmusic and although it wasn't as devastating as the one-and-a-half-star rating would suggest, it was still pretty harsh. I first listened to it while waiting for the bus in a fifty-degree downpour, and while, yes, under these circumstances EVERY Swans album will sound like the most gorgeous thing ever laid to tape (the first four albums included), I still thought it was amazing, even in the context of the rest of their career. Upon further listens, I discovered beautiful songs with unnecessary and incongruous codas ("Jane Mary, Cry One Tear"), some unspeakably cheesy lyrics ("Universal Emptiness"), and some other qualms, and I certainly don't hear Bill Laswell's influence. Nonetheless, even the tracks I have qualms with are good-to-great otherwise, and if the rest of the album were complete shit--and it's actually quite good, IMHO--it would be redeemed by "God Damn the Sun." "The River That Runs With Love," and their aching cover of "Can't Find My Way Home," which outdoes the original approximately 182305108724fold.

But enough about me, what says everybody else?

― owen moorhead (i heart daniel miller), Friday, 7 October 2005 18:29 (twenty years ago)

Classic. A bit overproduced at times, but some beautiful songs.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 7 October 2005 18:41 (twenty years ago)

owen, I sez your right on. it may not have been what anyone was expecting at the time, but it's still gorgeous. if anything, a little ahead of its time - bring on the noise-folk! also right on wrt the tracks.

and fwiw, I saw them play in support of this one and they did not fail to kick astonishing volumes of ass. still one of my top-five shows ever.

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Friday, 7 October 2005 19:16 (twenty years ago)

this is the only Swans album I listen to regularly (followed by Sountracks for the Blind). I like laswell's overproduction on it.

― kyle (akmonday), Friday, 7 October 2005 19:21 (twenty years ago)

ha - I saw them twice on that tour.

early on, at the 9:30 Club in D.C., the show was comparatively acoustic although they still found a way to rev up looped sections of the songs. however by the time weeks later, frayed from the road, they reached The Masquerade in Tampa Florida, they'd transformed it into as crushing a grind as ever!

I like the LP - but then again I love the Swans whole attitude

― Paul (scifisoul), Friday, 7 October 2005 19:41 (twenty years ago)

I like this album just fine.

― Last Of The Famous International Pfunkboys (Kerr), Friday, 7 October 2005 19:44 (twenty years ago)

"Can't Find My Way Home"! Yes!

This produced a lot of snickering when it was released, of the Swans-have-gone-Streisand variety. But to me it also seemed like it was just a natural growth from "Children of God".

― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Friday, 7 October 2005 20:34 (twenty years ago)

Could do without the Laswell influence (at least he didn't play bass on it), but song-wise probably the best of their post Children Of God records. Track down the official-ish live bootleg album from that tour, Anonymous Bodies In An Empty Room (if you can find it), for superior versions of most of the Burning World songs.

― Matt #2 (Matt #2), Friday, 7 October 2005 21:54 (twenty years ago)

I'd like to hear this again.

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Friday, 7 October 2005 22:29 (twenty years ago)

This album is a resounding dud. Worst Swans thing ever. At the time it came out, I thought their good days were behind them forever. Thank dog I was wrong.

― Bimble The Nimble, Jumped Over A Thimble! (Bimble...), Saturday, 8 October 2005 06:16 (twenty years ago)

Imagine being the guy who masters a Swans album, having to listen intently to it to maximize the sound and just going "what the fuck"? Those guys must hear a lot of weird shit and it must be tough to make choices about what kind of sound these artists want.

― Spanish Electro, Saturday, 8 October 2005 09:49 (twenty years ago)

Probably one of my favorite Swans albums, despite the fact that it sounds nothing like the early records which roped me in in the first place. I always felt like "Children of God" was a bit awkward, reaching out in multiple directions, and this album offered the logical conclusion of one set of goals. "God Damn the Sun" kills me every time, and "Can't Find My Way Home" is just soul-crushingly beautiful.

― philip sherburne (philip sherburne), Saturday, 8 October 2005 13:21 (twenty years ago)

it is the bridge from children to white light & love of life. and it really does contain some of their best songs. god damn the sun is on the top ten list of almost ALL swans fans. my only problem with it, and i never really had a problem with the laswellisms, even though, to me, gira would prove to be a much better producer of sound than laswell or even bisi (and don't get me wrong, i love bisi, especially the swans stuff he did but lotsa other stuff too) was that it was the first and really only swans record that sounded like shit on vinyl. everything previous to it and after it would sound amazing to these ears, and that cheap uni vinyl was just the pits. so was their rap vinyl at the time. the u.k. 12 inches i have for the burning world singles sound so much better. just beautiful.

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 8 October 2005 13:33 (twenty years ago)

Gira seems to regard this album as a lot of shit, never reissuing it, calling the comp with tracks from it Various Mistakes or something...yet the Angels of Light records sound JUST LIKE IT.

― kyle (akmonday), Saturday, 8 October 2005 14:45 (twenty years ago)

he didn't like the way the songs came out. he still plays god damn the sun live. i think he really achieved what he was going for on burning world with white light and love of life, but by then nobody really cared except for swans fans. what little media blitz he got during the burning world era went away forever.

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 8 October 2005 14:56 (twenty years ago)

so, really, for me, burning world was just a lead-up to two of my favorite rock records ever made.

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 8 October 2005 14:59 (twenty years ago)

nicely put, scott. i'm going to have to dig those two out - love'em as well, they're probably better albums but something about the various mistakes in "burning world" is exactly why i like it so much...

― philip sherburne (philip sherburne), Saturday, 8 October 2005 15:10 (twenty years ago)

i thought at the time, and still do think, that the evolution from, say, holy money to the new mind 12 inch to children of god and on and on until swans are dead was just such a thrilling thing to watch! maybe i'm just a weirdo. I was with those guys 100% i like the young god/aol/body lovers stuff a bunch even if i think most of it is a variation on a variation on a theme.(though variations played at a very high level of craft and accomplishment) I have really enjoyed going along for the ride.

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 8 October 2005 15:30 (twenty years ago)

i guess it's easy to see jarboe as the natural cut-off point from old to new as she joined in 1986 or thereabouts, but i'm pretty sure that even without her 1986 swans would have started diverging from 1984 swans. mainly cuz the difference between 1984 and 1986 is vast and deep. and by 87 gira was already making goth chamber folk on the side. i know there used to be die-hard swans-nutz who saw her as some horrible influence on their he-man god.

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 8 October 2005 15:40 (twenty years ago)

I still think this album is a weird misfire but somehow all the reissues and splitting up among various releases and etc. makes the individual parts greater than the whole. Scott's call on the Angels of Light is good, though.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 8 October 2005 15:58 (twenty years ago)

"my only problem with it, and i never really had a problem with the laswellisms, even though, to me, gira would prove to be a much better producer of sound than laswell or even bisi (and don't get me wrong, i love bisi, especially the swans stuff he did but lotsa other stuff too) was that it was the first and really only swans record that sounded like shit on vinyl"

Really? One of the things I remember liking about this record was the sound of it. I heard one of the ones they did after this and didn't think it was as cool sounding (didn't have the same budget?).

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Saturday, 8 October 2005 16:13 (twenty years ago)

i was talking about the mca/uni vinyl. it's just a cheap pressing. and like i said, the uk 12 inches sound great. i've never heard a cd copy. with hindsight and all, they never should have bothered with a u.s. label. shoulda stuck with sympathetic uk indies. they always knew how to lovingly present that stuff. (and had john loder produce burning world or something)

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 8 October 2005 16:21 (twenty years ago)

Loder, I guess, just passed away in August?

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Saturday, 8 October 2005 16:49 (twenty years ago)

I see there was a thread about it. What are your favorite Loder productions, Scott?

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Saturday, 8 October 2005 16:56 (twenty years ago)

Ha! basically anything recorded at Southern Studios. Everything by Crass. Rudimentary peni. Flux Of Pink Indians. Actually, I can't remember if he did the first Flux album. I wanna say he did, but I'm not sure. He did the Neu Smell single. Um, Jesus & mary Chain. Hell, just the Sidewalkin' 12 inch alone... he was a god. Penny Rimbaud wrote his obit for the Guardian. But, yeah, Crass changed my life. The "SOUND" of those records changed my life. For real. They changed the way that i looked at and listened to music.

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 8 October 2005 17:38 (twenty years ago)

I think, and i could be wrong about this too, that gira and swans did work with loder at southern once on a recording of A Screw for some comp album. I don't remember what it sounded like. gira went to a bunch of uk studios to work on the first two world of skin records, but never southern. rico conning, daniel miller, and john fryer helped with those records too. i think he just always needed good engineers to make sure that the drums were killing you enough. bill laswell was never gonna kill you good. i hate the drum sounds he gets on records. i remember buying that sly & robbie rhythm killers album when it came out and liking it a bunch, but also thinking that it had some of the corniest drum sounds on earth on it. some of that muffled echoey shit would have been too wimpy for phil collins. most of his stuff sounds like it was recorded in the 80's, no matter when it was recorded.

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 8 October 2005 17:49 (twenty years ago)

really like "can't find my way home" and "goddamn the sun", but can't remember much else about this album which is surprising because i had a roommate who pretty much played it into the ground. cover art was nice.

― tricky (disco stu), Saturday, 8 October 2005 19:02 (twenty years ago)

I always thought the cover art was beautiful. Reminds me of "Fern Gully," because I'm three years old.

― owen moorhead (i heart daniel miller), Saturday, 8 October 2005 21:30 (twenty years ago)

This thread makes me want to hear one of those Skin records again real bad.

― Bimble The Nimble, Jumped Over A Thimble! (Bimble...), Sunday, 9 October 2005 19:37 (twenty years ago)

the cover is a mapplethorpe photo

― kyle (akmonday), Sunday, 9 October 2005 19:43 (twenty years ago)

one year passes...

Revival for the masses pending (does no-one see these threads?)....

Great songs, but definitely overproduced. The live stuff is fantastic, though, especially the 1988 tour. They played two excellent unreleased songs that tour that could really bring the house down. One, "The Unknown", has this great riff...

Still, White Light from the Mouth of Infinity is much better.

― J.H. Malerman (xada_hgla), Saturday, 18 November 2006 23:16 (nineteen years ago)

It'd never get into my top five Swans things, even though I'm always surprised that it's better than I remember, every time I hear it. Nice reissue on Young God Records a couple of years ago too. (also: Matt #2: OTM about those Anonymous Bodies In An Empty Room live versions)

― StanM (StanM), Saturday, 18 November 2006 23:58 (nineteen years ago)

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