Anhedoniac by Jarboe, reviewed by Pieter Uys.

7/29/2019 Anhedoniac by Jarboe, reviewed by Pieter Uys.

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Anhedoniac

Jarboe


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Anhedoniac was released in 1998 as a mail order item. This remastered

Atavistic reissue of 2004 is enhanced by two added tracks an a capella and

an instrumental version of Im a Killer that bookend the album. The thematic

and spiritual continuity with mid 1990s Swans is striking more so than with

the solo albums Thirteen Masks and Sacrificial Cake the exception being the

legions of vox entia that proliferate here.

Anhedoniacs emotional frequencies resonate with many of Swans most

intense moments and with The Body Lovers Number One of Three. Moreover,

the music further explores directions pursued during various phases of Swans

and World of Skin. Cohesion is solid, owing to the arrangement of narrative

and segue and the sonospheres or atmospheres that occur throughout.


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Jarboe provided piano, organ, additional keyboards, vibraphones, bass,

percussion, tapes, atmospheres and the legion of voices. Brian Castillo, Lary

Seven and Joseph Budenholzer contributed guitars; Castillo, Seven and

William Bronson supplied bass; Michael Evans and Bronson beat the drums.

Mark Spybey, Christus Snipes, Brett Smith and Jerry Blue helped to complete

the soundscape.

Through the vortex of agitated voices on Im a Killer the phrase words that

draw blood linked in my mind to a line in Anne Sextons poem The Dead

Heart: The tongue, the Chinese say, is like a sharp knife: it kills without

drawing blood.* Blood or not, its a killer.

Over the title tracks repeating melodic keyboard loop, the voices engage in

call-and-response chanting. Haunted fairground I was thinking when the red

velvet wound from Soundtracks for the Blindappeared. An omen.


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Later, Anhedoniac Bottle displays a similar pattern, becoming ever more

unsettling as diverse voices, including a tormented little girls, partake in the

singing, unmoved by the clunk of a bottle hitting the floor. The link is You See

Through Me on Giras solo album Drainland.

From fairground to claustrophobic Cage as a robotic male vocal repeats a

phrase which reveals spiritual yearning despite its crude carnal expression.

Sudden roars, muffled outbursts, repressed disembodied voices and objects

that crash and shatter pierce the wall of rolling thunder and grinding guitars.


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Then gentle acoustic balladry lulls the listener whilst serenading

aforementioned foul-mouthed Sinner until the music suddenly sinks into a

harsh industrial netherworld where a jerky, thudding beat carries another

unhinged voice, shepherding the listener towards the red velvet wound

And what do I do,

With the gift you presented me,

The one no one else would buy?

They would not accept the filthy premise

of your most terrible innocence.

So let them say how you were wild,

For what you really were was tender.

Yes how you screamed all through the night,

Yet silent tears streamed down in morning light,

Most beautiful, my lonely sinner.

beyond which lies Not Noahs Ark, an abyss of vox bestiarum, a cacophony

of growls, bellows, bleats, burps and such. All taboos are ignored in order to

capture the complete spectrum of mammalian sound from every orifice.

Informative but not aesthetically pleasing. The concluding recital confirms

that this is the primordial subconscious where all is reduced to a greyish

translucent slime of gore. The root of this goes back to track 16 on 1992s

Love Of Life, nestled between God Loves America and No Cure For The

Lonely. Titled (----), its composed of frisky percussion, soothing noises to

reassure a howling kitteh and Jarboe telling it I love you.


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Another type of terror surfaces on Mississippi where an old lady with a strange

southern accent recounts a traumatic event. The eerie undertone is

accentuated by a symphony of chimes, insect choirs, rumbles and squawking

birds. Compared to Mississippi and Not Noahs Ark, Burn is mild, despite the

ferocity of the voice which easily beats that of Mother Father from The Great

Annihilator.


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Fortunately sorrow also leads to the sublime, as in the numinous poem

Forever where the vocal progresses from spoken to sung. And how gracefully

it unfolds, reversing the entropic direction of Sinner. Halfway through,

deadening despair gives way to surrender / resignation as something relaxes

the grip of the emotional vise*.


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The source of the intervention may be beyond comprehension but the means

by which it acted here is partly clear. A seemingly insignificant element of

Forevers intricate sonic lattice is the subtle ululation that momentarily hovers

over or after key words like wastes, writhing, heart, pain and effigy. This

sound effects the shift that leads to remission.


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An aspect of the ineffable force becomes palpable on Under Will. Except for

two spoken phrases by a male vocal, this majestic lament of wordless vocals

and wavelike textures with chromatic, harmonic & modal shifts equals the

similarly structured masterpiece Warm on The Great Annihilator.


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The tonal poem Circles In Red Dirt opens with spoken voice. Exquisite

background vocals gradually enter the picture to adorn and add depth to the

recital. The Finnish band Panasonic transforms Circles into a striking

sonosphere by blending voice, drones and polyrhythmic percussion which

follows constantly morphing meters. Panasonic in Red Dirt brings to mind the

most striking of what was termed intelligent techno in the 1990s the

instrumental mood pieces of e.g. Autechre.


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Conventional in structure and delivery, the softly swaying Sacred Disciple

Wannabe and the gentle ballad Honey show no trace of the trauma that

permeates Anhedoniac. It manifests in the lyrics, leaving the music

untouched, whereby a peculiar type of tension arises. Honey bears a close

resemblance to the torch songs of World of Skin or from another angle, the

haunting track Blackmail that goes all the way back to about 1986.

The host of vox entia return on the penultimate track, the original Im a Killer,

in all their growling, hollering, shrieking, sobbing, whimpering and sneering

wounded splendour. Then the chthonic force is spent, exorcised, as this

magnificent album concludes with an instrumental version of the song,

voiceless yet more powerful than before. The triumphant finale of a power

that is now controlled and directed.

As before,

This face, for centuries a memory,

Non est species, neque decor.

Expressionless, expresses God: it goes

Past castled Sion. She knows what God knows,

Not Calvarys Cross nor crib at Bethlehem

Now, and the world shall come to Walsingham.

From: Our Lady of Walsingham by Robert Lowell.


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*The Poet Of Ignorance by Anne Sexton

Perhaps the earth is floating,

I do not know.

Perhaps the stars are little paper cutups

made by some giant scissors,I do not know.

Perhaps the moon is a frozen tear,

I do not know.

Perhaps God is only a deep voice

heard by the deaf,

I do not know.

Perhaps I am no one.

True, I have a body

and I cannot escape from it.

I would like to fly out of my head,but that is out of the question.

It is written on the tablet of destiny

that I am stuck here in this human form.

That being the case

I would like to call attention to my problem.

There is an animal inside me,

clutching fast to my heart,

a huge crab.

The doctors of Boston

have thrown up their hands.They have tried scalpels,

needles, poison gasses and the like.

The crab remains.

It is a great weight.

I try to forget it, go about my business,

cook the broccoli, open the shut books,

brush my teeth and tie my shoes.

I have tried prayer

but as I pray the crab grips harder

and the pain enlarges.

I had a dream once,

perhaps it was a dream,

that the crab was my ignorance of God.

But who am I to believe in dreams?

Anhedoniac by Jarboe, reviewed by Pieter Uys.

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