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.
