SWANS "Greed" LP

SWANS "Greed" LP

Black vinyl LP, in heavy board jacket with printed inner board lyric sleeve.
Euro Import.

SWANS, have been praised by many reviewers for ''taking rock as far as it can go.'' Michael Gira, the group's songwriter and vocalist, considers this an insult. ''Saying the music can't go any further implies that we don't have much imagination,'' he says. ''But we do have imagination, and the music will keep on changing.''

1986's Swans are different from last year's in several respects. In 1984-85, the Swans were a quartet, using the standard instrumentation of singer, guitar, bass and drums but proposing a new vocabulary of feedback, distortion, crawling tempos and intensively felt vocals. It was a sonic extreme, but one well-suited to Mr. Gira's songs and perspective, which stripped the veneer of politeness and euphemism from social encounters to probe the power relationship beneath. ''I've always been interested in the implicit violence that's the subtext of our everyday interactions with bureaucrats and other figures of authority,'' Mr. Gira said. ''It's just the kind of subject I've always been drawn to.''

The new Swans album, ''Greed'', opens with a sound that is radically removed from the abrasive sizzle of earlier Swans disks. Instead of metallic guitar textures, there's a piano playing moody, minor-key figures, and Mr. Gira's singing is supported by a vocal chorus of overlapping sighs. The album's other songs are a varied lot musically; some are dominated by the hammer-on-anvil chording of the guitarist Norman Westberg, while others feature a welter of chanting voices and sound like some sinister religious ritual.

The album's cover sports a big red dollar sign, and many of the songs focus on relationships between money, power and sex. ''Money's flesh in your hand,'' says one lyric. ''Flesh is easy to get when you work for your money.'' Other songs explore the mental set of people who undervalue their own worth, often because of what they do for a living. ''The kind of work a person does shouldn't automatically define that person or his worth,'' said Mr. Gira, ''but all too often it does. The people who pay you money to do work, especially if it's the kind of work that just leaves you feeling deadened, or exercising control and power, which is the essence of money.''

The combination of lyrics that express these concerns and music that batters the listener like blows of a hammer make Swans a group that won't be everyone's cup of tea. The Swans may sound to some like they are ''taking rock as far as it can go,'' but Mr. Gira sees it differently. ''I can imagine doing this for a long time,'' he said. ''As long as we keep the music honest and don't get pretentious with it, we can keep finding new ways to make music.''

Tracklist
1. Fool
2. Anything For You
3. Nobody
4. Stupid Child

5. Greed
6. Heaven
7. Money Is Flesh