Swans Are Dead
A July tour has marked the beginning of the end for the current iteration of New York experimental titans Swans. The lineup of guitarist/vocalist Michael Gira, lap steel guitarist Christoph Hahn, bassist Christopher Pravdica, drummer Phil Puleo, guitarist Norman Westberg and multi-instrumentalist Thor Harris (who is unfortunately sitting out this run for personal reasons, with keyboardist Paul Wallfisch stepping in as his replacement) is set to make its last stand on the current touring cycle and disband next year. I caught the band in Boston and Brooklyn at opposite ends of a month on the road supporting June’s The Glowing Man.
In the time since the band’s 2010 reactivation, Swans have had no trouble living up to the original 1982-1997 run’s reputation as an intense, punishing live band. Shows supporting the band’s first reunion effort My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope to the Sky, a relatively restrained affair in comparison to the trio of double-disc monsters that would follow, still offered two-hour sets and immense volume levels. Things certainly didn’t mellow out from there. I’ve seen a show or two on each tour since 2011 and these two dates – the Brooklyn show in particular – ranked among the loudest and longest performances.
Indeed, a particular brand of earsplitting ferocity has remained Swans’ calling card throughout the band’s soon-to-conclude second phase, but so too has a fervently forward-thinking approach to performance. Setlists heavy on 1980s fan-favorites were dispatched with almost immediately on the 2010-11 tour, leaving only the occasional warped take on “I Crawled” (or later, “Coward”) behind. In their place were dramatically extended versions of cuts from My Father that gradually gave way to entirely new songs, some of which would eventually find their way onto 2012’s The Seer. For subsequent tours, the cycle continued: setlists would pair constantly-evolving versions of songs from the previous LP with entirely new works being developed before the audience’s eyes.
For frontman Michael Gira, nostalgia was akin to blasphemy in the world of Swans, even if “nostalgia” amounted to a faithful performance of a song officially released just months earlier. The further removed from an album release, the more likely it was that fans would hear little in the way of the familiar during a show. This is part of what made the reactivated Swans such a compelling and acclaimed live act. Their shows didn’t just offer a window into the passion and tension of the creative process, but allowed it all to unfold as a communal experience. The group was never unveiling rickety road-tests of unreleased songs so much as exploring new ideas before a crowd, and the six of them became such a cohesive, powerful ensemble that an audience with the patience for their sometimes 30-40 minute efforts could find plenty to get lost in. In some sense, I suppose they were the jam band for people who dress in all black and have strong opinions about Eyehategod.
Even in the short span between the Boston and NYC dates of this particular tour (July 7th and 30th, respectively), the band’s restless nature manifested itself in contrasts between the two sets. Opener “The Knot,” a (currently) sole new song which borrows the crashing one-chord intro of My Father‘s “No Words / No Thoughts” before spiraling off in a different direction entirely, clocked in at a polite 15-20 minutes in Boston. On Saturday, it wrapped up nearly 45 minutes after the group took the stage. Boston’s segue of To Be Kind‘s haunting interlude “Some Things We Do” into The Glowing Man‘s “The World Looks Black” became a marginally less successful lines-blurred mashup in Brooklyn. A surprising reworking of the 1992 deep cut “Amnesia” from the Boston show was nixed entirely.
Deviations aside, seeing these two shows in such close proximity reminded me why Swans were a band that kept me coming back time and again. They aren’t a group that plays bad shows if their shows are the kind of endurance tests you enjoy, but some nights can feel more dialed-in than others. Saturday’s Music Hall of Williamsburg gig was the longer and messier of the two, but ultimately the more satisfying. The venue itself – a lived-in, no-frills space as opposed to the Royale’s inauthentic upscale vibe – certainly felt more fitting. By way of acoustics, the strength of the PA or merely the band’s will, it was loud – loud in the chest-rattling, physically-affecting way few shows are. And when it came to the songs themselves, it was simply a meaner, heavier and more moving set.
If you closed your eyes while packed into the sweaty, sold-out 500-cap crowd, you could almost imagine it was one of the near-mythical Swans shows of the early to mid 1980s that supposedly sent the feint of heart sprinting toward the doors where New York City cops were readying to pull the plug due to noise complaints. If that’s the last Swans gig I ever see, it felt like the right one to go out on.
Photos from both shows below. The Boston ones are pretty straightforward and the Brooklyn ones a little less so. A few shots of cellist Okkyung Lee, who opened both shows with ferocious solo sets that took that instrument to places I didn’t realize it could go, are included as well.
