Erototox Decodings
Christopher Nosnibor
Internationally, Kristof Hahn is best known as a member of Swans since their return in 2010, contributing electric guitar to My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky and everything since (he was briefly a Swan in the late 80s and early 90s, becoming a touring member for The Burning World and appearing on White Light from the Mouth of Infinity and subsequently joining Gira’s Angels of Light. A lot has happened since then: My Father Will Guide Me was only forty-four minutes in total, whereas now they’ve evolved to have single tracks of that duration, and Hahn’s contribution on recent albums and tours has been lap steel. Witnessing his action on the last tour, while standing so close to him I could actually see the mud spattered around the ankles of his jeans, the significance of his contribution to the immense walls of noise the band create is clearly apparent. I’ve also been vaguely amuse by just how neat and dapper his presentation is, producing a comb to slick his hair back following particularly strenuous crescendos – although I also witnessed him taking said comb to the strings of his instrument in Leeds to yield some particularly unholy noise from an instrument more commonly associated with laid-back twangin’ country tunes.
What’s perhaps less widely known is that Kristof has enjoyed a lengthy career in music before joining Swans, as both a solo artist and a member of rockabilly garage acts The Legendary Golden Vampires, founded in 1981, and The Nirvana Devils (circa 1984). It’s with the former he’s back flexing his creative muscles despite an intense touring schedule with Swans.
Here, the Berlin-based core duo of filmmaker Olaf Kraemer (vox) and Kristof Hahn (guitars, organ, harmonica), reunited for the first time in many years, are joined by Thomas Wydler (drums), Achim Färber (also drums), and Chandra Shukla (sitar), to cook up a collection of ten songs.
The style is understated, country-leaning, occasionally folksy, with an underlying melancholy hue, with ‘Wohin Du Gehst’ crossing the language barrier to convey a low-level ache of sadness in its tone. Kraemer’s vocals are husky, almost croony, with hints of Mark Lanegan, and suit the low-key compositions well, conveying emotion and world-wearinness and a certain sense of sagacity, which is nowhere more apparent than on ‘White Horse Blues’.
If the reverby guitars of their Husker Dü’s ‘She Floated Away’ channels Chris Isaak, the song’s incongruously jaunty twist is in the vein of fellow German duo St Michael Front, while ‘The Rain’ is sparse and hypnotic and wouldn’t sound out of place on True Detective. The melancholy Leonard Cohen-esque ‘Sad Song’ speaks for itself, quite literally, self-referentially returning to the hook ‘this is such a sad song / and I sing it just for you’.
Discussing the songwriting ‘craft’ on an album feels pretentious and a bit wanky, but making songs this sparse – but also this layered – is a true example of crafting. Having mentioned Leonard Cohen previously, one thing that’s often overlooked is just how many incidental details there are on many of Cohen’s songs: The Songs of Leonard Cohen in particular is , on the face of it, acoustic guitar and voice, but there’s much more happening in the background, coming in and out of the mix, and this is something that comes through in attentive listening to Polaris. It’s subtle, keeping the overall sound quite minimal, but the attention to detail is what really makes it special.
AA
Aural Aggravation 