Customer Reviews

Everything Is Good Here-Please Come Home

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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?!

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.

this will have swans shaking in disbelief. mr. gira has outdone himself again with this crooning avant-classical folk hymnal of morose mystery.take all the beautiful , truly emotional, songwriting of How I Loved You and blend in a rich medley of aural fireworks-both dissonant and melifluous and you still have only one aspect of this strange album. best album so far this year -in any genre.

After the brilliant debut New Mother and the follow-up How I Loved You, Michael Gira has pulled off that difficult third one. Palisades with its unusual instrumental flourishes opens the album & is followed by the harsh and dissonant note of All Souls' Rising before the sonic radiance of Kosinski reaches the ears. This is a gem of chiming guitars that are eventually joined by what sounds like violins; haunting imagery and a hypnotic arrangement complete the magic circle.

The Family God is a complex piece containing lovely gentle passages interspersed with louder choruses and intricate instrumentation - it sounds like a flute towards the end. Because She Was is a short 40-second bit of vocals and guitar strumming and the up-tempo Rose Of Los Angeles rocks vigorously whilst the ballad What You Were is graced by tender piano.

Then follows another gem in the form of Sunset Park, a lilting ballad with an infectious tune, rich texture of interacting voices owing to an imaginative vocal arrangement which, together with the repetition of the minimalist lyrics, achieves a mysterious & mesmerizing effect. A children's choir accompanies Gira's aching drawl on the track Wedding, adding an eerie feel to its already strange & experimental stop-start structure.

This beautiful album concludes on an ominous note with the (preferably not) prophetic What Will Come, a melodious ballad with atmospheric instrumentation and an enigmatic spirituality resembling that on Children of God. Shiver me timbers. I love the tracks Palisades and Kosinski as much as masterpieces like This Is Mine, Forever Yours, The Garden Hides The Jewel, Evangeline and Two Women from New Mother and How I Loved You.

There is no voice like Michael Gira's and no musical vision quite like his post-Swans incarnation. I also recommend the 2008 album We Are Him and of his earlier work, Ten Songs for Another World by World of Skin, Swans' Various Failures and for the intrepid undaunted by experimental sounds, Number One of Three by The Body Lovers.

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.

Beautiful, heartbreaking collection of folk songs. Despite the fantastic instrumentation and the myriad of talented artistes on display, this feels like nothing more than Michael Gira's finest solo album yet. After all, you could erase Devendra Banhart's caterwaulings altogether and not lose anything of the impact. Without doubt the finest Angels record to date, and getting close to one of the best things Gira has ever done. Not to be elitist, but switch off your MTV and and your radios, hold off on buying that next Top 40 record, and give this album a listen. It won't change your life, but it will certainly enrich it.

Rarely does a musical piece deliver the same structure, mood and aftereffects that an abstract motion picture does. One of these extraordidnary albums is Everything Is Good Here/Please Come Home by the Angels of Light, the third full-length album from ex-Swans vocalist and Brooklyn based label, Young God Records owner, Michael Gira. At the end of the album, like an elusive film, the listener is left slightly disoriented, yet yearning for more. Once can only wonder why such classic film-noir music has yet to be featured on the soundtracks to surreal films by eccentric directors everywhere.

The album's often menacing tone, is due to the resonant orchestral instrumentation, which provides an almost majestic, enduring eminence in the ways of a more mature Black Heart Procession.

Gira touches on such subjects as betrayal, the loss of love, death and all things dour. However, what at first appears to be simplistic, faint lyrics, with each line having no real connection to the former, when scrupulously examined, the actual message becomes clear. When these same morose lyrics are sung through Gira's murky, brooding voice, the dismal background music only aide in furthering his melancholy expressions.

When compared to previous Angels of Light albums, Everything Is Good Here/Please come Home continues in a similar fashion, however, there is a newfound maturity and passion that is much more prevalent. The great intensity of the album is what sets them far apart from similar bands like Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds and New York's own gothic lounge-noir act, Piker Ryan's Folly.

Maybe Gira is just a troubled man rying to do his best living in a shallow, ominous world, or maybe he's an often un-recognized musical genius and true visionary. Either way Everything is Good HEre/Please Come Home is a benchmark album that will hopefully set the stage for future disenchanted musicians.

M. Gira has not even come close to being a complete thought since those early years. Every release, on the surface seems interesting, but they all ultimately are missing something vital, something that gives them a life. Its very hard to describe. It always seems as though I am listening to a demo or a work in progress. This latest project "Angels" seem to take itself so seriously in all the strangest ways, it is almost a bit insulting to be honest. I have heard all of these melodies before, but now I am supposed to take them more seriously because M. Gira has decided to sing over them. If you like "Angels" it just seems like there are other bands/people doing this whole mood/sound better and with more honesty. To see people comparing Gira to Tom Waits or Cohen is a bit disturbing to me, because I just don't think Gira's music brings the same class of writing and depth. Anyway, If your a fan, your a fan, and probably not to interested in hearing this.

This new band by Michael Gira (ex-Swans) has been around for about three years now. With this album, Gira seems to have moved on from his dark past, by creating a new rock/folk hybrid. This time he has collaborated with numerous musicians such as Kid Congo Powers, Eszter Balint, and Devendra Banhart: a bunch of scenesters from New York and Germany. Gira has developed a palette that seems personal, new, and sensible. He deals with themes of childhood and growing up in songs like "Palisades" and "Rose of Los Angeles." It is most like some psychedelic records of the late 1960s, but sounds modern at the same time. His recent intimate live shows have been gathering great interest.

(www.freewilliamsburg.com)

I think people can now stop mentioning the Swans when they speak of Angels of Light, for Gira has surpassed anything his former band has done with this album. Hauntingly beautiful and my favorite album of 2003.