Trivia / Swans

• Black Sheep Hit: "Love Will Tear Us Apart" (a Cover Version of a Joy Division song) and, for the most part, the majority of their '90s work.
• Creator Backlash: Most of their late '80s and early '90s output, but especially The Burning World.
  • When Young God Records began reissuing Swans' discography, Gira compiled what he felt were the best tracks from The Burning World, White Light from the Mouth of Infinity, Love of Life, the World of Skin album Ten Songs for Another World, and other singles and B-Sides into an album titled Various Failures. Only three songs from The Burning World were used while most, or at least half, of the other albums were represented.
  • Gira finally relented by reissuing The Burning World with bonus tracks from White Light and Love of Life as Forever Burned in 2003, though it was in a limited pressing which sold out quickly. A even more limited "Fetish Edition" of Forever Burned came in packaging that was actually set on fire.
• Creator Breakdown: Much of Gira’s output in the mid-to-late 90’s was informed by his struggles with alcoholism and deteriorating relationship (both creative and romantic) with Jarboe. The most overt instance of this was in the track “You See Through Me” from Gira’s solo album Drainland, which samples a heated argument between the two over Gira’s alcohol issues that Jarboe had surreptitiously recorded.
• Creator Couple: Michael Gira and Jarboe were romantically involved during Jarboe’s tenure in the band. In the post-reunion era, Michael’s wife Jennifer has also provided guest vocals on Swans material.
• Denial of Digital Distribution: Their sixth studio album The Burning World is the only studio album by the band not available to download or stream, presumably due to Gira's longstanding dislike of the album.
• Enforced Method Acting: Jarboe achieved the scream at the start of “Hypogirl” by chugging a bottle of old whiskey and gagging in disgust while recording it.
• He Also Did: On top of his musical work, Gira also authored a short story collection called The Consumer, that is absolutely filled to the brim with Nausea Fuel. The song "Empathy" on Soundtracks for the Blind is actually based on the opening story in the collection, which is a graphic depiction of Brother–Sister Incest. In 2017, Gira published another collection of stories called The Egg, which includes a CD of him reading stories from both books. Gira describes the stories in The Egg as "the burnished, gathered and organized residues of a mind eating itself."
• Keep Circulating the Tapes. The debut EP Swans was appended as bonus tracks to the first CD pressings of their album Filth. While Filth itself was repressed various other times, it wasn't until 2015 that the debut EP saw the light of day again.
  • Greed and Holy Money were combined, along with the song "Time is Money (Bastard,)" and "A Screw" and "Blackmail" from A Screw, on a compilation titled Greed/Holy Money. The compilation broke the albums apart, creating a near-random tracklist. An updated version was reissued as part of Cop/Young God / Greed/Holy Money in 2005, which added back a couple of songs from the original albums and EPs, but still leaves out "Money is Flesh (#2)" from Holy Money and "Time is Money (Bastard) (Mix)" from the Time is Money (Bastard) single. The original configurations of the two albums and two singles involved in Greed/Holy Money have not been re-issued.
  • The output of spinoff band Skin / The World of Skin, in its original form. A compilation of their best material, World of Skin, was re-issued alongside Children of God in 1999, but it excludes about a third of their work.
  • The Swans albums White Light from the Mouth of Infinity and Love of Life didn't get proper reissues until 2015, getting rereleased before in compilations that reordered their tracklists while omitting tracks. The Burning World had a similar fate... until it was reissued in 2012.
• Newbie Boom: There is a huge new generation of fans that came after the released of "The Seer" and especially "To Be Kind", who came to see the band as a sinister Post-Rock act, in comparison to the amazing range of genres they covered in their first phase.
• Write What You Know: If stuff like "Failure" is to be believed, Gira has had a seriously screwed up life. A lot of musics also revolve around Gira's alchoolism.
  • Proven by numerous interviews. "Blind" and "Alcohol the Seed," in particular, gain a great deal of emotional resonance in context.

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