Writing about Young God being a classic record label feels a little like an act of deception. Not because it hasn't issued a string of excellent recordings. But if you envisage record labels to be airy offices with glass tables, huge advances and A&R men waving their chequebooks, Young God is most certainly not it.
A one-man operation run today from a desk in Woodstock in upstate New York, Young God has not really changed since its birth in 1990, when Michael Gira founded it purely as a means of self-publishing the work of his band, Swans (who announced this week that they are reforming).
Gira's decision to self-release his music was largely prompted by bad experiences with other labels, "many of which were always at least partially my own fault, I now realise", he adds dryly. But after his band split in 1997, Young God underwent a change, which is to say, its proprietor underwent a change. Returning under the name Angels of Light with a new clutch of songs, Gira, now severe-looking in tan shirt, braces and stetson, as if he'd stepped out of a turn-of-the-century photograph, now pursued more of a song-like direction, rooted in folk, country and bluegrass, but steeped in a brooding intensity and heaviness of spirit. Listen to the mariachi-tinged My True Body on his 2001 LP How I Loved You and you'll wonder who exactly was wielding the whip, and on whom.
Early releases from bands like Calla from Brooklyn, and Larsen, an obscure post-rock group from Torino, Italy, set out Young God's stall as purveyors of an intense sort of chamber rock. Young God's most luminous early signing came when a friend handed Gira a CD-R of a young singer-songwriter who was, at the time, homeless, surfing sofas between New York and San Francisco, playing everything from matinee gigs to wedding receptions. Devendra Banhart would eventually release four LPs through Young God, but his first two – 2002's Oh Me Oh My … The Way the Day Goes By the Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Love Songs of the Christmas Spirit and its follow-up, The Black Babies – sounded especially fresh at the time, their shaky non-production only emphasising the singular weirdness of his curious Marc Bolan quaver and intricate fingerpicking.
"Working with Devendra was a high point for me, creatively, musically and personally," says Gira. "His success naturally lifted the label up too, and opened up a lot of possibilities that wouldn't have otherwise been there." And while Gira's subsequent signings have all had something of Banhart's mix of rootsy tradition and luminous otherworldliness, Young God signs individuals, not to any preconceived genre niche. Take, for instance, Mi And L'au, a French girl and a Finnish boy making austere folk music from a woodland cabin in Helsinki. Or free-wheeling hippy-gospel collective Akron/Family, who also played as Gira's backing band for the album Sing "Other People" and together on the joint-billed Akron Family & Angels of Light. Most recently, Young God has become the home of Portland, Maine's Fire On Fire, who hide bleakly comic lyrics in bluegrass and full-throated singalongs: "Even the worst of man has friends/Even the hangman has friends," they chorus on Hangman.
The twin blights of economic recession and filesharing have taken a little of the zip out of Young God's release schedule and perhaps it's for this reason that Gira has chosen to revive the Swans name. It's hard, though, to imagine Gira signing anything to make a fast buck. "There's been a few things that came my way that I thought were excellent on their own terms, but I didn't see as being appropriate for the label, for whatever ineffable reason. Ironically, a few of those artists have gone on to become incredibly successful, but no names here …"
Like many things largely run outside of commercial imperatives, though, you feel Young God will cut its furrow for as long as Gira feels there's music out there worth supporting. A hard rain falls, but Young God feels made for such times.
Holy smoke! Three choice Young God cuts
Holy Angels of Light – We Are Him
The fifth album by Young God's founding father is a masterful balancing of light and darkness, Gira's stark, craggy songs filled out by an ensemble cast including Moog, strings, dulcimer, lap-steel and romping rhythms courtesy of Brooklyn psychedelic ensemble Akron/Family.
Devendra Banhart – Oh Me Oh My ...The Way the Day Goes By the Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Love Songs of the Christmas Spirit
Myth has it that some of the songs on Banhart's debut album were recorded direct to cassette tape on an answering machine. What Oh Me Oh My ... lacks in gloss and polish, though, is more than made up for by the songs themselves: fragile, fingerpicked odes that imagine how Bolan might sound were he raised by witches.
Lisa Germano – Lullaby for Liquid Pig
Originally released in 2003 but long since out of print, Young God gave former Lilith Fair songstress Germano's lost album a new lease of life. Woozy, ambient folk with guest spots from Johnny Marr and Crowded House's Neil Finn, it's wistful and ethereal, but packed with songs that linger in the memory.
