The singer who turned Swans from a wall of force into something vast and melodic, and then built a solo and collaborative body of work larger than the band that made her name.
Jarboe is filed by the Bureau at Tier I, both as the other central voice of Swans and as a major artist in her own right. Her route in is part of the story: she discovered industrial music through an Atlanta radio station, sent a tape of her own experiments to the band's label as a way to audition, and moved to New York to join in the mid-1980s. Her arrival changed the band. From Children of God onward the brutalism opened toward melody, classical instrumentation and scale, and she became, with Gira, the group's one constant until it disbanded in 1997.
Alongside Swans she and Gira ran the duo World of Skin, gothic torch songs and electronic experiment that stood apart from the parent band. But the larger story is her own catalogue, which is enormous: from Thirteen Masks and Sacrificial Cake through dozens of self-released records, built on textured drone, ritual percussion and a voice that moves from near-whisper to full devotional force.
She is also one of the most collaborative figures in the heavy underground, which is partly why she sits so centrally in the archive's web. Her album with Neurosis is widely loved; J² paired her with Justin Broadrick; she has worked with Lustmord and Oxbow, and gathered Blixa Bargeld and J.G. Thirlwell among many others onto a single multi-guest record. When Swans reformed in 2010 she was not part of it, though she guested on The Seer; her work needs no parent band to justify it.
The Bureau's reading. Jarboe is filed at Tier I as a central Swans voice and a major artist in her own right.
Filed by Bureau editor · VAGO · c. the Anthropocene · last revised c. the Anthropocene