Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Miracle of Love
2. Black Eyed Dog
3. Golden Boy That Was Swallowed by the Sea
4. (-)
5. I Remember Who You Are
6. Her
7. No Cruel Angel
8. When She Breathes
9. Why Are We Alive?
10. Child's Right
11. (-)
12. Other Side of the World
13. Song for Dead Time [Mg Version]
14. Love Will Save You
15. Blind
16. Unfortunate Lie [Instrumental Version]
17. Was He Alive?

Disc 2:

1. Failure
2. Identity
3. Can't Find My Way Home
4. Trust Me
5. Better Than You
6. Love Will Tear Us Apart [J. Version]
7. Will We Survive?
8. Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes
9. God Damn the Sun
10. Eyes of Nature
11. You Know Everything
12. Song for Dead Time [J. Version]
13. Picture of Maryanne
14. Amnesia
15. Dream Dream
16. Please Remember Me
17. New Mind [Acoustic]

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31859 in Music
• Released on: 2005-08-01
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: Double CD, Import
• Dimensions: .23 pounds

Customer Reviews

Flawed compilation of a truly great band
If ever a band were crying out for the exhaustitive box set treatment it's The Swans( along with Fatima Mansions, Microdisney, The Young Gods, Big Black, American Music Club amongst others) Their two most monumentally brilliant albums "The Burning World" and "White Light At The Mouth Of Infinity " are only available on CD at ridiculously inflated prices and their transition from amoral totalitarian noise merchants to purveyors of luxuriant yet doom laden folkies is one of the most compelling in modern music. This double CD is the only overview of their career, yet it's frustratingly incomplete with some bewildering omissions though this being The Swans the quality quotient is still admirably high.
What are on here are panoramic vistas of "Better Than You ", "Will We Survive" "Why Are We Alive?" "Miracle Of Love" supplemented by plunging bass lines, cavernous percussion, gasping strings and exotic textures. Michael Giras, s portentous stentorian vocals grumble convincingly about tears, blackened skies, and failure. This is not happy music but neither is it laughably grumpy and true beauty is offered by Jarboe who provides sumptuous backing vocals and quite stunning lead vocals on tracks "I Remember Who You Are" and "Can, t Find My Way Home" and in doing so gives a comprehensive lesson to diva warblers on how to sing ballads properly with convincing emotion and feeling.
The omissions are very frustrating .No "Saved" or "The River That Runs With Love It Never Runs Dry" from "The Burning World". No "Celebrity Lifestyle" from "The Great Annihilator ", nor the pounding title track from "Love Of Life". These are surely superior to tracks like "Was He Ever Alive?" or "Identity" and definitely preferable to the various brief instrumental interludes that adorn side one. But Gira is nothing if not perverse and at least the truly glorious "Love Will Save You" and the jaw droppingly bleak "God Damm The Sun" are included. By the way the reviewer who lists the superb "Mona Lisa, Mother Earth" as being on the album is alas mistaken, at least as far as my copy is concerned.
A great band The Swans, but this two disc compilation comes nowhere near encapsulating their brilliance or their diversity .Like I said before a box set really is the only way to do them justice, and one including their Skin incarnation and one including all the horrid -yet sometimes thrilling -early noisy stuff. Until then this album while providing music of breathtaking quality should be considered something of a failure and my tears of frustration continue to fall from charcoal skies.....or something like that.

Enter the world of SWANS
Swans were a band who mutated from a wall of slow grinding noise merchants to a band who made some of the most beautiful music of the late 80's to early 90's.

Fronted by the gravel voiced Michale Gira and latterly, the silken tones of Skin (nothing to do with Skunk Anansie), Swans provided an extraordinary sound track to the times.

From the beauty of Mona Lisa, through the utter dispair of Failure, the Swans made simply extraordinary music of immense depth and quality. Sure, there are points where it is far from easy listening, but if you wanted that you'd be buying the Dido album, right?

This is a wonderful introduction to a very beautiful, powerful band. Take the chance, you will not be dissapointed.

Immensely powerful & profound
This 2-disc compilation draws from the Swans albums Burning World (1989), Love of Life (1991) & White Light from The Mouth of Infinity (1991) plus the EP single Love Will Tear Us Apart (1988), as well as Ten Songs for Another World (1990) by the side project World of Skin. It also includes a few previously unreleased tracks. The music is spread over two discs:

1 YELLOW DISC

Here one finds the chilling interpretation of Nick Drake's Black Eyed Dog with Jarboe's howling vocals as hair-raising as on Mother Father from The Great Annihilator. Eerie breathing and disembodied electronic barking add another layer of unease; this song makes your hair stand on end. If the Edvard Munch painting The Scream was given a voice, this is exactly what it would sound like.

For merciful contrast, there are gentle ballads with beautiful melodies like The Golden Boy that was Swallowed by the Sea sung by Mike and Jarboe's The Other Side of the World and the achingly beautiful I Remember Who You Are where her voice excels as a vehicle of tenderness, empathy and hope.

On the eerie number Her, Michael's lullaby like introduction is followed by a harsh, atonal & intrusive rock riff that gives way to the voice of a teenage girl talking about summer, her boyfriend Charlie, the Atlanta International & Monterrey pop festivals, musicians like Janis Joplin, The Who, Johnny Rivers and The Grateful Dead, with period radio commercials and static noise in the background.

Michael sings The Child's Right, a desolate ballad about death and decay with hints of religious imagery and Blind that sounds like a take from the Burning World sessions. A moving melancholic ballad, it deals with one of his favorite subjects, alcoholism in lines like" "Because when I'm drinking, I'm out of control/No I was never young, and nothing has transpired/And when I look in the mirror, I feel dead, I feel cold, I am blind."

This much abbreviated version of The Most Unfortunate Lie is deceptively titled "instrumental," as it does contain a few lines of Michael's vocals and the spectral children's voices.

This disc's total running time is 75:52.

2 RED DISC

This one opens with Michael's harrowing Failure and is followed by Identity, another strange one with a little boy reciting a weird spiritual poem over riffs rife with minor-chords and snatches of distorted male vocal.

Breathtaking is the word for their interpretation of Steve Winwood's Can't Find My Way Home, hypnotically and spookily sung by Jarboe over eerie instrumentation. Jarboe's version of Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart is a further masterpiece.

The haunting Jarboe track Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes is the poem To Celia by Ben Jonson (1573-1637) set to hymnal music. A cursory glance at Jonson's lyrics reveals nothing overtly spiritual; the theme seems to be romantic love. Still, there are ambiguities and the melody undoubtedly originates from the Olde English Hymne tradition. This version has lost its Lord's Prayer ending

One of Michael's moments of extremity is the devastating God Damn The Sun, where he out-Cohens Leonard on a slow, meandering ballad with an achingly beautiful tune. On the previously unreleased Picture of Marianne, he gently interprets this poignant and gentle ballad.

This disc also has Jarboe in oneiric mood appearing as the angel of morphia, luring you into the other-world of the melodious Dream Dream. More of her work with Swans & World of Skin is available on the Mystery of Faith album.

The red disc's total running time is 78:02.

The fold-out leaflet contains the lyrics to all the songs plus 5 full-color illustrations by Deryk Thomas. I have deducted one star for important omissions. Various Failures is an impressive achievement but imperfect archive since a few of my favorite songs from the period have been omitted: Saved from The Burning World, The Sound Of Freedom from Love Of Life & Everything For Maria from the 3rd World of Skin album.