Jarboe

Jarboe Devereaux is a singer-songwriter who was one of the crucial creative forces behind the band Swans in the '80s and the '90s, which was only the first phase of her career. Her catalog as a solo artist goes deep. Her earlier work was roughly in the same vein as the first run of Swans (temporarily disbanded in 1997), except for being more toned down and more open in terms of her melodies and rhythms. She got bolder and more adventurous over time, incorporating spoken words and poetry readings, exploring sound textures and dissonance, and at times, further moving into atonality and cacophony. That said, she occasionally returns to conventional song structures with perhaps sideways glances at jazz and trip-hop. When her opera training comes to the front, it adds even more power to her already remarkable voice.