Angels of Light
How I Loved You
[Young God]
Rating: 4.8
If my 22 years of pop culture consumption have taught me anything, it's that
clichés are the vertebrae of our language. Mainstream media perpetuates the
sad state of our communication as a society-- our tendency to say what we
believe is true because we've heard it so many times on television or from
Hollywood or on Top 40 radio. This cycle that produces, nurtures, and
transforms our interaction undermines individuality. And yet, there's
something comforting in using stock phrases to help us express our feelings;
if we are to believe in a construct like "the human condition," it might as
well follow that there are only a handful of ways to express our state(s)
lucidly.
Certainly, the bombardment of triteness simply can't hypnotize all of us all
of the time. We who wear the badge of "cynic" proudly do our best to develop
linguistic calluses and shun clichés as much as possible. M. Gira, the
mastermind of the Angels of Light and formerly of the Swans, is one such
cynic who does his damnedest to thwart all things trite in his art. Odds
are that he should fail on his newest record, How I Loved You, since
he's singing mostly about the most potentially insipid subject: love.
Generally, Gira is successful in sounding at least somewhat fresh in his
amorous lyrical approach. The problem is, he seems so afraid of rehashing
that he ends up utterly obtuse (those who read criticism in The Village
Voice are all too familiar with this unfortunate phenomenon). A line
like, "The red sea is raging/ With my coughing and spitting/ My love is bitter
sulpher [sic] burning" (from "My True Body"), is too preoccupied with flowery,
unlikely imagery to even make sense. And in "Song for Nico," he comes closer
to "gross" than "provocative" when he sings, "I am the reason your legs are
apart/ Mother, come into my heart."
Though Gira and his Angels are less cautious musically, they don't necessarily
fare better in that department than they do lyrically. With two songs clocking
in around eight minutes, and two more pushing the 12-minute mark, the Angels
of Light are clearly attempting Gladiator-scale epics. But these songs
(along with most of the others on How I Loved You) are bereft of a sense
of experimentation. The drab, forgettable songwriting and acoustic folk
framework is rarely altered over the course of the record, save in terms of
texture. The ubiquitous crescendos and sparse-to-large-to-sparse dynamic
become too predictable to sustain interest for more than three minutes, let
alone an entire hour.
The space between the pedestrian and the abstract is a dubious void that only
the most skilled lyricists and musicians can squeeze down. The fact that
Gira attempts the monumental, snug fit is admirable. Sure, he sounds like he
means what he's saying, but his esoteric words seem born more out of
self-satisfaction than pleasing listeners. Ultimately, conviction does not
compensate for inaccessibility; Gira's calluses, you see, sound much more
like warts.
-Richard M. Juzwiak