Experimentalist and former Swans member Jarboe’s latest album Sightings is an immersive album that will appeal to many prog fans. It sees her embracing the natural world and celebrating the life of late King Crimson sleeve artist Francesca Sundsten. The boundary-pushing multi-disciplinarian tells Prog about the new record, her time with Swans and her passion for Pink Floyd.
The red-eyed vireo has the widest vocabulary of any songbird on the planet. Native to North America, its astonishing daily repertoire consists of over 20,000 vocalisations. Experimental artist Jarboe vividly recalls an encounter with one at home in Roswell, Georgia.
“Red-eyed vireos come by my garden, but this one was unique,” she says. “He was more verbose than anything I’ve ever heard. It sounded like free jazz – like Ornette Coleman or Miles Davis. It was improvisational and non-repetitive, with little phrases in between his melodies. I was just fascinated.”
Jarboe used the experience as a springboard to Sightings, the 33rd solo album, and 55th overall, of her extraordinarily prolific career. The multi-disciplinarian – sometimes known as The Living Jarboe – recorded the bird and added backing vocals and electronic tones to create a shifting minimalist soundscape. Fellow musicians, including Thor Harris and members of avant-garde psychedelicists Father Murphy, added strings, guitar, percussion and brass, in keeping with Jarboe’s guiding aesthetic.
That track,Vireo Serenade, was followed by ambient epic Choir And Night Fox, based around a shrieking vixen; The Holy Waters Sangha, a semi-orchestral meditation on friendship and community; and the elegiac Francesca Sun, written for painter Francesca Sundsten, late wife of departed King Crimson and Swans drummer Bill Rieflin.
“Frankie was a very dear person,” says Jarboe. “A lot of her artwork is on the cover of King Crimson albums; so I thought about how she continues to live through her work. All these different things that I was feeling and seeing were flooding my consciousness when I made Sightings. It’s meant to be celebratory.”
The album is underpinned by the philosophy that’s guided Jarboe since she started out in the early 80s: “I think you just keep searching and being interested,” she explains. “This idea of combining different worlds and not really having a recognisable style – that’s just been me from the very beginning. I was doing exploratory cassette projects back in the day.”
One such cassette was 1984’s deeply investigative Walls, an abrasive piece of industrial electronica made with effects units and an old reel-to-reel. “The direction would’ve been performance art,” she says. “I’d been doing things at some underground art galleries, in the nude and rubbing mud and different things on my body. My actual background was choral singing and studying Hammond organ.”
Having been gobsmacked by extreme noise terrorists Swans on independent radio in Atlanta, Jarboe arranged to interview the band in New York for a zine. She sent them a copy of Walls in advance. Before long, she was invited to join as vocalist/keyboard player by leader Michael Gira, with whom she also entered into a personal relationship every bit as intense as the music itself.
Jarboe’s arrival in the group was critical. “When I first came across Swans, it didn’t register as music I’d ever heard before, which is why I wanted to get involved,” she says. “I recognised that it was intelligent – that it was asking you to explore. Bringing my chorus-singing and musical training eventually changed the entire trajectory of the band, because it opened the door to melody and different sounds.”
She brought with her a slew of diverse musical influences, from Arvo Pärt and Spooky Tooth to Popol Vuh and Pink Floyd post-Syd. “What Floyd did in terms of production – different sounds and time changes and atmospheres – can’t be beat. They’re the masters of that. I actually developed an extreme infatuation with everything that David Gilmour did. I still think of him as a total genius.”
Swans’ brutal, slow-grinding sound took a while to catch on. Their early live shows were often confrontational affairs, with Jarboe marked out, appallingly, for special attention. “The audience would be hardcore skinheads,” she recalls, “and we’d be performing in buildings where they’d gather and have violent shows. And they certainly didn’t want a female. You name it, it happened to me: spat on, verbally abused, slapped, knocked down, bottles thrown at me.
“What kept me going? I completely believed in the music. It was my entire life. The endurance required just makes you incredibly tough.”
She remained an integral member of Swans until their initial split in 1997. Their punishing final tour, she says, left everyone “just stupefied with exhaustion.” It all came to a head when someone made a mistake onstage, leading to an almighty band fight. The aftermath found Jarboe settling back into the solo work that she’d maintained during her time with the group: 1998’s scarred Anhedoniac maps the emotional fallout from the Swans experience with unflinching candour.
“That album is downright diaristic,” she says. “It’s right down to the bone, written from a place of severe trauma. But I never stopped having a massive and deep love for Swans. The discipline required is something I’m grateful for now – to be pushed to the limit, where you’re broken down, but keep doing it over and over again. It means you get to explore beyond what you think you can do as a singer and musician.”
Collaboration has always been a key aspect of Jarboe’s creative life. She’s made albums with the likes of sludge metal outfit Neurosis, sound artist Lary Seven and Godflesh frontman Justin Broadrick – along with Skin/World of Skin, her Swans side-project with Gira. Her 2005 solo effort The Men Album featured fellow outliers Blixa Bargeld, JG Thirlwell and Low’s Alan Sparhawk, among others.
But she’s become a little more selective of late. With Sightings she preferred to construct her judicious sound collages with the aid of a tight circle of friends. “There’s a lot of field recordings on this album,” she says. “I’m more interested in integrating those into the music, along with analogue sounds, and then marry them to digital. That’s where I’m going right now. It’s all about living in discovery, to keep looking and never have any expectations.”
Sightings is on sale now.
