AMG Review of Body to Body, Job to Job

Ned Raggett
All Music Guide

Collecting a number of unreleased studio and live recordings from 1982 to 1985, including a variety of tracks that would be recorded for the Cop album, along with some tape loops used to back the band in performance, Body to Body, Job to Job understandably isn't anywhere near as cohesive as the often quite carefully arranged and sequenced studio Swans records. As an alternate peek at the band at work during their astonishingly extreme early years, though, this is true manna for Swans fanatics, if not even close to essential for most others. Following no specific chronological order, crisp studio performances rub up against near-mono club performance pieces ("Red Sheet," from an early ~CBGB show, has Gira raging "Get out!" over a particularly coruscating guitar), while the various loops, nearly all percussion-based, must have added even more to the feeling of oppressive power during live shows. It's definitely interesting to hear how variety, albeit at times of only slight degree, turns up as the band progresses; Gira's howling on 1985's "I'll Cry for You" stands out from the music more, and has a little more control to it, than earlier death marches like "We'll Hang for That." This said, some things are uniquely Swans, namely lyrics about power, control, death, and revulsion (best song title of the lot being "Mother, My Body Disgusts Me") over usually sludgy, harrowing rides through an extreme-rock hell; what would be tedious or laughable in other bands, though, always has a dark, invigorating appeal in the hands of Gira and company, even on outtakes like these. Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth is the most well-known of the rotating series of players with Swans credited on the album, though trying to find him specifically on any track is essentially impossible -- it's very much Gira's band here at this early stage, all the way.