In my top 50 introduction, I joked about a drinking game based on bands I discovered because of the World of Darkness role playing series and their Vampire the Masquerade game in particular. Well, time to pour that shot because we have our first act.
Vampire was a painfully edgy, incredibly 90’s game in which players were cooler than thou, (most times), angst ridden Vampires, fighting amongst themselves and various political factions. It’s aged badly, but at the time it was catnip to the long hair and trench coat crowd. The school I went to wouldn’t allow me to grow my hair long, and I didn’t have a trenchcoat. But I was all in anyway.
Each chapter of the Vampire rule book would start with a quote from a song, and this was my introduction to Joy Division, The Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus and lots of other bands who wore too much black.
There were several quotes from White Light in source books and between that name, White Light from the mouth of Infinity is an incredible name, and this quote from Love Will Save You, Swans became a band I really wanted to check out.
“Love will save you from the black night and the lightning and the ghost
Love will save you from your misery, then tie you to the bloody post
Love will save you from the hands that pull you down beneath the sea
Love may save all you people, but it will never, never save me”
I wonder if anyone ever asked Michael Gira about being featured in the World of Darkness games. I assume he would have hated it, he always seemed to be a very grumpy man.
That cover really doesn’t set you up for this album.
At this point in their career, Swans have completely changed from their original No Wave grinding noise assaults of the 80’s. White Light is a very melodic album that’s beautiful in places. There’s lots of acoustic guitar and tracks like Song for the Dead Time are much closer to folk than my tastes would normally run. But there is a darkness here, a rot that even the brightest songs can’t hide. There may be strings and beautiful backing vocal harmonies but the lyrics are raw and full of pain and anger.
It takes a lot of sneer to start an album with a song called Better Than You and mean it. Combined with the one, two punch of it and the second track, Power and Sacrifice, the album doesn’t so much grab your attention, as grab you by the neck and stare you down.
The bass and drums on Power and Sacrifice give the song such a commanding atmosphere. Gira’s baritone carries the weight of the universe as he sings that he’s “dead to right and wrong”. It’s an incredibly heavy song without being metal in any way.
One of the best things about writing this top 50 is just sitting down with an album and really giving it time. Some of the albums on this list are records I love but wouldn’t have listened to much recently and this project is letting me reconnect with music that has meant so much to me.
With that in mind, it’s only been spending time with this album over the last few weeks that has made me realise just how impressive a piece of work White Light is. I’d never just sat down with it and pulled it apart to see what makes it great.
It’s the contrasts that make this album great.
Jarboe’s beautiful voice offsets Gira’s deep, world broken one. The lightness of a lot of the music versus the lyrics’ subject matter. Delicate songs that end in towering crescendos without you realising how they got there. Each song is perfectly weighted and wrapped in its only little world, alternating between carrying and dragging the listener to the album’s close.
This isn’t the easiest album to love. It’s an unflinching gaze into the abyss, and that combined with its run time of an hour and 12 minutes can make it a challenging listen. But when you need to sink into the darkness, this is the perfect soundtrack, its combination of anger, intelligence and despair unlike anything else I’ve heard.
https://lynkify.in/album/white-light-from-the-mouth-of-infinity/cst4RKew
The ways of exile 