When doing reviews here at Ghost Cult, we try to keep things subjective, rather than injecting how we feel about an artist. Sometimes, when an artist becomes entrenched in your identity to the point where your friends hear said artist, it makes them think of you. This goes past the point of subjectivity and becomes more personal.
Swans are such an artist. At the same time, people might not associate them with me as strongly as they do Bowie, Morrissey, King Diamond, or The Cure; this is because Swans are not in the pop culture lexicon. This is intentional. Music has always come first, and this continues to be the case on Birthing (Young God Records).
Having more pronounced eras than Taylor Swift (another artist that reminds my friends of me – shhh that’s our little secret), the band’s post-reformation material that began with 2010’s My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky turned to a jammy exploration of sound that would become less song focused with sprawling swathes of sound. With this came performances at festivals like Coachella and Bonnaroo, with the band’s audiences now not just being a vibrating sea of black t-shirts but integrated with Patagonia browns that bore the scent of bongwater. Yet, the band never pandered to the mainstream or compromised, as each album became more dissonant and jarring until it found its groove.
All things that bear influence on this album, which Gira claims will be the last of its kind, as future output will be more pared down.
It takes several listens at varied volumes to fully digest and comprehend this album. Headphones are recommended, and because Swans are the loudest band I have ever witnessed live, high volumes are suggested as well. The album’s opening track, “The Healers,” feels like what you might hear the band at a Pentecostal church do while the hand-waving congregants wait on the “word of the lord” during the prophecy and prayer part of their tent revival. Given the title, Knowing Gira, this might be the mood he was going for, and it works to set the listener up for when the groove kicks in, as it creates a powerful dynamic that harkens back to the band’s nineties golden years.
Gira’s vocals drop lower. Despite their resonance, it feels more like speaking in tongues combined with throat singing than his croon on their best work. You can always count on these guys for a hypnotic drone, this gets jammy about eleven minutes in, before being thrown into chaos and noise for a spastic burst. The shimmering ambient buzz that ends the first song bleeds over into “I Am A Tower.” This finds Gira back in his spoken-word mania that marked the band’s 2010 reformation material. Melody slowly unfolds, recalling their nineties output again. This shows one of the band’s defining traits in their ability to make the drone pay off.
At 71, it’s not fair to ask Gira to do more than what Bowie was doing when he died at 67, and he is not going for the kind of singing Jagger does. This band represents everything the Stones are not. So his performance works for what is going on here. The title track is a sprawling 22 minutes, the first two of those being ambiance that boils into darker rock dissonance. The eventual ring into the lush sonic purpose of their nineties sound, just without Jarboe, whose absence might be an understandable sticking point for some. You can’t argue against the expansive ache of the guitar melodies that unfold here, with Gira’s spiritual vocal intonation acting like a Buddhist chant. Ebbing down into a fragile lullaby. Further proof that Post-Rock would not exist without these guys.
The whispered cadence of Gira’s vocals creates a creepy cultic chant that sounds like a surreal sixties horror movie soundtrack opens “Red Yellow.” It crosses the line from sonic splendor into actual songwriting. The drums have almost a Led Zeppelin-like throb to them, perhaps the best song they have done is from the past few albums. “Guardian Spirits” mixes the experimental layers of sound from “the Seer” with their darker nineties feel, while incorporating some of the industrial clanging from the earlier days as the rumming grows in intensity as the song builds. The harsh noise of “The Merge” leads in a cool noir bass line. They incorporated jazz more into this song than anything from their previous albums. They ride off this swelling wave of ambiance until dropping down into a lo-fi folk that is a staple of Gira’s writing process.
The band proves they are still capable of taking you on tense, beautiful journeys, and while it might not be their best work, they recreate the kind of moods that bring them closer to the more classic sounds of the Jarboe era. Fans have a reason to rejoice. If you need an introduction, “Love Of Life” would be more recommended.
Buy the album here:
https://www.Younggodrecords.com
9 / 10
WIL CIFER
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