Swans: Where Does a Body End? Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

Swans: Where Does a Body End? Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 15, 2021

The music industry often judges things by chart performance, and in that regard Swans frankly hasn’t had a huge impact, especially considering the longevity of the band in various formulations. On the album charts, it’s perhaps notable that the band never even charted in the United States until 2012, with The Seer, despite having been putting out albums since 1983 (albeit on indie labels in the early years, which may have affected things). Even after 2012, they have only scored two more “at bats” on the album charts, with only one of those, The Seer’s follow up To Be Kind, getting into the Top 40. Singles action from the band has arguably been even worse, though kind of in reverse order, with the band scoring a couple of times on either the US College Radio or US Modern Rock charts (neither exactly the Hot 100, so to speak) in the late 80s, and then never repeating even that arguably low level success. And yet — here is a two hour (plus) documentary devoted to the band and to Michael Gira in particular that is often absolutely fascinating, with a huge glut of talking heads (including Gira himself) proving just how influential Swans was and continues to be. It’s not every music documentary that can claim to feature both Sonic Youth and Jimmy Swaggart, but Swans: Where Does a Body End offers that, and more.

The very question posed by this documentary's title might indicate a certain tendency on the part of Gira to muse on metaphysical questions, and in fact one of the kind of interesting things in this piece is the often quite introspective, even naval gazing, propensities of not just Gira but other band members like Jarboe, which might seem not be the "presumed" fit with a proto-punk outfit (just one of many styles Swans has exploited). This is a huge, wide ranging documentary in any case, though, placing the band in the cultural milieu of its founding and then tracing both it and Gira through any number of metamorphoses.

Swans: Where Does a Body End? Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Swans: Where Does a Body End is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of MVD Visual with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer (mostly) in 1.78:1 (as can be seen in some of the screenshots accompanying this review, some archival video can be in more narrow aspect ratios). All of the contemporary material is sharp as a tack, with a nicely suffused palette and generally great fine detail levels. As happens more often than not in documentaries like this which are culled from a variety of sources, the archival video is often very ragged looking, with pixellation, macroblocking and combing artifacts galore.

Swans: Where Does a Body End? Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Perhaps surprisingly, Swans: Where Does a Body End does not offer a surround track, instead featuring a perfectly fine sounding LPCM 2.0 track. This is another music-centric piece which frankly tends to use music more as interstitial material than anything to be relied on for great expanses of time, and so in that regard a surround track is perhaps not missed as much as it might have been otherwise. As with the video element, audio on some archival material isn't quite up to the general snuff of the newly shot material, which all sounds fine. Optional English subtitles are available.

Swans: Where Does a Body End? Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 2:15)

Swans: Where Does a Body End? Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I frankly really didn't know a whale of a lot about either Gira or Swans when I opened this disc and stuck it in my player, and, seeing the length of Swans: Where Does a Body End, assumed I was in for something of a slog. Color me pleasantly surprised, then, to have found Swans: Where Does a Body End an often ingratiating and even provocative biography. Talking heads run rampant here, but the good news is most of them have interesting things to say. Technical merits are solid, and Swans: Where Does a Body End comes Recommended.