Search - Angels of Light :: Everything Is Good Here-Please Come Home

Claustrophobic and Repulsively Honest

semanticfelon | tempe, arizona United States | 03/14/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"After the relatively restrained and dignified 'How I loved you,' I expected this album to be a further move towards the Leonard Cohen/Nick Drake mood that Gira so masterfully invoked with the first two AoL albums. But it is evident from the first track 'Palisades' that some psychic disturbance has reasserted itself in Gira's writing. While Palisades has beauty, it also has a violence that is more reminiscent of earlier SWANS work. The lyrics in particular are harrowing: 'Reasons won't come/And no one will regret that you're gone.'
The theme for the album is thus set: the main settings are damp, suffocating family traumas, apart from the gorgeous voyeur's lament 'Kosinski,' which is unquestionably one of the best Gira has ever written. In fact, if this album consisted of nothing but that song and fifty minutes of silence, this would still be the best album of the year to date.
The artwork adds to the feeling of claustrophobia, with pictures of humble rooms that one can easily imagine were the places where god knows how many secret tortures were played out. The music is, in the main, quite a bit uglier than the previous AoL albums- the manic 'Rose of Los Angeles' finds Gira at his most hostile- but like his book 'The Consumer,' the ugliness is so recognizable that it seems like one is listening to one's own inner monologue given external life. And the beautiful moments are thus made even more precious. The closing track 'What will come' swoons and sparkles with ominous charm, even as the narrator begs the God he knows to be absent to save him from the pitiless future. Some people seem to have found a 'redemptive' theme in this work but I confess I can't see it. Any album that begins so bitterly and ends with such a presentiment of dread is not describing the saving of a soul, much as such a release is wished for. However both 'Sunset Park,' which is nearly a prayer, and 'Kosinski' do make one feel the very heights of joy. This is a strange, ambiguous, and furiously passionate album, and there is nothing like it. A bleeding jewel, uncompromised and alone."

Prepare to be surprised!

musicdoesnthavetobeboring | U.K. | 12/03/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Wow. You never know where this album is going to take you. From the opening track it's a journey into a unique and unorthodox musical vision. Taking cues from Great Annihilator-era Swans it's much more than a incremental step in development - this album's a quantum leap in terms of depth and complexity. At times it brings to mind Firewater - if Firewater had lived lives of heroin addiction, pain and misery. Such comparisons are only fleeting though; this album has a sound all of its own. Turn it up loud and go with it...and look forward indeed to hearing what a choir at an insane asylum might sound like on track 7 :)



A true original. I love it, when's the next one?!

"

HIS VOICE CONTAINS NATIONS

Anthony R. Stomski | ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA | 03/18/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Don't cry no more...He's coming here....From the opening of "Palisades" to the extreme highs of "Nations" and "What You Were" to the haunting "Wedding" and the closing of "What Will Come"....This is Michael Gira's greatest offering, and I PRAISE HIS NAME. Anyone who has a connection with SWANS, World Of Skin, or The Angels Of Light will be very pleased with Everything Is Good Here/Please Come Home."