Swans - Children Of God (2LP)

Released in October 1987 on Caroline in the States and Rough Trade in the UK, Children of God is the moment Swans shed their early concrete overcoat and let some light in. Not soft, not comforting, just light. You can still feel the weight of the earlier records, the grind and the repetition, but the palette opens up. Acoustic guitars creep in, churchy organ shimmers, and Jarboe’s voice arrives like a warning and a mercy at the same time. It is the first Swans record that feels fully concerned with beauty as much as brutality, which is why it still floors people who come to it through the recent epics.

The first few minutes set the terms. New Mind hits like a bell, Michael Gira barking over a marching rhythm that keeps mutating, while streaks of melody slice through the noise. Then you land in In My Garden, Jarboe turning the room cold with a lullaby that sounds half prayer, half threat. That back and forth is the engine of the album. It is not just heavy, it is devotional, and the devotion gets pulled between earthly hunger and something more celestial. Even the song titles read like a catechism flipped inside out, and when the choir-like layers swell behind Gira, it reaches a kind of cracked liturgy that no one else was touching in 1987.

Sex, God, Sex remains one of the most gripping Swans tracks on vinyl. A mid tempo stomp, words repeated until they shift meaning, the band grinding the riff into iron filings while the vocals tip from accusation to pleading. The title track is colder, sparer, and you feel the distance in it. Children of God does not offer relief so much as perspective, the band stepping back from the hammering and finding an uncanny space where acoustic strums can sit next to drum thunder and not feel at odds.

A lot gets written about this record as a turning point, and for once the cliché fits. You can hear the bridge it builds to the more song driven edges of the late 80s and early 90s catalogue, but you also get a blueprint for the long form tension and release the band would chase in the 2010s. Jarboe is crucial to that shift. Her harmonies and lead vocals give the record its sense of a haunted chapel, her keys and textures gluing together the quieter passages without smoothing off any corners. Gira’s baritone is still brutal, but there is patience in it, and the pair find a balance that makes even the most pummelling sections feel purposeful rather than punishing.

The record’s impact kept unfolding after the fact. The live album Feel Good Now, captured on the 1987 European tour, shows how these songs expanded on stage, all ritual and repetition, the melodic threads stretched until they seemed to fray. Years later, the material was reissued as Children of God/World of Skin, a tidy reminder that the side project experiments were already baked into the DNA of this moment. Critics have steadily pushed it up the Swans rankings, often calling it a watershed, and it is easy to hear why. Plenty of bands eased from abrasion to atmosphere in that era, but few did it with this clarity of intent.

If you are hunting for Swans vinyl, this is the one that changes how the whole discography reads. A clean pressing does wonders for the dynamics, those sudden hushes and surges. The cymbals breathe, the organs bloom, the low end sits like wet earth. Children of God vinyl pressings can vary, so it is worth digging for a well cared for copy, or one of the reputable reissues. If you are in a Melbourne record store and you spot it tucked in the experimental or post punk bins, do not hesitate. And if bricks and mortar is out of reach, there are plenty of options to buy Swans records online without risking a dud copy. Swans albums on vinyl reward volume and space, and this one more than most.

What makes Children of God endure is the sense that it is reaching for transcendence without pretending it is easy. The songs do not resolve neatly. They circle, they test the listener’s patience, then pay it back with a melody that feels stolen from a hymn book and corrupted in the best way. It is an album about hunger, about the body and belief, and it sounds like it was etched with both hands. Thirty plus years on, it still feels like a doorway. In a collection next to the early bludgeon and the later cathedrals of sound, it earns its place, a hinge that creaks every time you pull the shelf for another spin. For anyone building a library of vinyl records Australia wide, Children of God belongs in the stack, not just as a historical note, but as a record you live with.