pls recommend which swans album i should listen to next

[PLEASEHELP1991]

i've listened to white light from the mouth of infinity and idk which album i should listen to next, preferably one with jarboe on lead or background vocals
i hate how spotify only has their compilation albums so could someone recommend places where i can listen to it in a proper album format

[Samus Aran]

did you like White Light? that's my favorite one lol. its companion album that was recorded pretty much at the same time is Love of Life, but it's not nearly as good imo.

jarboe is never prominently doing lead vocals though. she just has certain songs scattered across some swans albums where she does. but she is contributing to background vocals very often. even a good amount on The Seer (a fantastic album), even though she hasn't really been a permanent member since the 2010 band reform.

Holy Money is their obligatory classic album that has a lot of their old industrial feel to it. i'm also very fond of Soundtracks for the Blind and Children of God (which features a lot of Jarboe vocals). My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky is quite good too, but less so than the others.

their new album, To Be Kind, is fantastic, but i don't think it has any contributions from Jarboe. likewise, their debut album Filth is a personal favorite although it also does not have any contributions from Jarboe.

their first live album, Public Castration is a Good Idea, is commonly cited as a must-listen for the simple fact that it's the only album of theirs that really captures their infamous classic live performances. some people hear about Swans because of this infamy - the stories of people collapsing or vomiting or whatever at Swans shows because of the sheer volume or oppressive tones. i think that's mostly urban myths at work, but it's true that they were notorious for volume and just being weird and erratic at the time, and Public Castration is really the only album that captures that at all. i think a lot of people don't really get that they didn't sound like that for very long and it was only live, not their recorded albums lol.