Their sixteenth studio album The Beggar continues that sprawling aesthetic that Swans have continued to refine since their 2010 resurrection.
The first two tracks, “The Parasite” and “Paradise Is Mine”, are as impressive as anything that has gone before them, tense playthings that further explore Michael Gira’s worldview.
The intermittent strums of the first scarred in Gira’s vice-like vocal, a phonically physical experience that always feels like he’s at the coalface of emotion, mining some immaculate truth. The buttressing splashes of instrumentation between each sentence cut back to just words, then strung out on a symphonic hypnotic, shimmering into bleeding lines sung over in chorusing volatility.“Is there really a mind?”, he questions, stuttering out in reductive repeats of “mind mind mind”, randomly shuffled in double chants of “in my, in my”. “Am I ready to die?” arrowing in there as little hints of gospel fan the flames. The production on these tracks (and throughout) is astounding, shapes run away with themselves, attentively vortex the potency of what’s being spoken in a visceral, life-affirming way.
Elsewhere, the album radiates a different intensity — an Angels Of Light coin-flip clothed in tendrilled orchestration, strumming acoustics that sour gorgeously on “Los Angeles: City Of Death”, tenderly glitter on “Unforming”. Sounds that optimistically linger, a bewitching counterpoint that eloquently adds to the group’s ever expanding lexicon, makes the darker moments even more saturated. “Michael Is Done” straddles a halfway house between the two, radiating redemptive to gorgeous orchestration, Gira’s authoritative voice shadowed beautifully by his wife Jennifer Gira, a song that attempts to exorcise doubt, prompt re-birth. A contrasting spectrum that holds your attention hostage, beams straight into the title track. Another concentrated nugget, an eerie and introspective love song of sorts, all matted hair, salty skin, its gristled nag exploding into some stellar guitar / moan combo. This percussively lashed magnificence that feels it could easily continue to punish you for even longer than its ten minute duration.“No More Of This” plunge-pools you back to the picturesque lilting, its chorused finale folding nicely into the stepping stone colours of “Ebbing” which find a blissful revelry. Two mellow tracks that open out into this disc’s closer, “Why Can’t I Have What I Want Any Time That I Want?”, whose dragging conviction conquers all. A synapse-biting jewel unfurling, maelstrom gathering round an incessant musicality — submissive, laid bare and crucified– ritualised in a rushing dervish. It’s a sound that clings to you obsessively, cathartically feeds the inner self.
The ultimate in Swans satisfaction then lands (for me at least) in the form of a fourty-four sonic trawl called “The Beggar Lover (Three)”, akin to 2005’s “Body Lovers” or 2010’s “Look At Me Go” that fills most of the second disc (and if you bought the vinyl as an extra download). Those Soundtracks For The Blind droning colours are great, untethering to some vivid spoken word, the broken sunshine of tunes beaming from between abstract chatter.Yeah, this is a feast the keeps on giving, culled from found sounds and extracted/ reconfigured tracks from The Glowing Man and Leaving Meaning. I even get a “Beggar” extended mix in there, something I wanted from the first disc’s incarnation, bookmarked by the further eight minutes of “The Memorious”. This hallucinatory angel lost to its leaking consciousness, its glistening words sliding into each other, massaging the spiralling instrumentation billowing around it. Words that grope at the meaning of existence, mealworming mortality in mantra-like lyrics that burrow deep inside.
I’ve loved this band for decades now, and I’m hearing nothing here that would persuade me to do otherwise for a long time to come.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
