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Swans, To be Kind: Some Things They Do

What makes To be Kind so devastating isn’t the fact that it’s chaos or that, led by guitarist/vocalist/founder Michael Gira, Swans are tossing out random strands across the 2CD/3LP’s two-hour span and just waiting to see what sticks. It’s that there’s consciousness at work in this material, that these pieces have solidified around initial ideas, come together over a period of time to be what they are, and that even in the 34-minute we’re-gonna-outdo-TheBeatles-and-TheDoors-at-their-own-games-and-still-be-Swans “Bring the Sun/Toussaint l’Ouverture,” which over its time runs from snare-driven tension and pseudo-religious chanting to Gira sloganeering in French — “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” makes an appearance with an extra rolling of the ‘r’ in the latter before Gira seems to switch to Spanish — there’s direction. Usually that’s linear, and the third album since Swans‘ reactivation follows suit with its predecessors, 2012’s The Seer and 2010’s My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky (review here), in its inimitable complexity and in how it was constructed. The core Swans lineup around Gira has been remarkably consistent since they ended their 15-plus-year hiatus, with Norman Westberg on guitars, Phil Puleo on percussion, keys and vocals, Christoph Hahn on guitar and vocals, Thor Harris drumming and adding further percussion, also playing viola and singing and Christopher Pravdica playing bass and guitar and singing. Bill Rieflin (also of King Crimson) also appears on various instruments and is credited as “honorary Swan forever,” which if you’ve got a business card is a nifty title to have on it. These players shift their roles depending on what the song calls for at any given moment — no word on who does the sawing that appears midway through “Bring the Sun/Toussaint l’Ouverture,” though the horses were wrangled by Guillermo Tellez Gonzales “Charo” — and as has been their wont, Swans bring in multiple guests throughout to handle brass instruments, additional vocals, piano, strings, etc. A varied sound is something of a given — to wit the funky stomp of disc-one centerpiece “A Little God in My Hands” or its rawer disc-two counterpart “Oxygen” — but To be Kind is cohesive and gripping in its intensity, whether it’s the bombast later in “She Loves Us” or the brooding psychedelia that emerges on the subsequent “Kristen Supine.”

The response has been accordingly hyperbolic. Big surprise, right? Swans put out an album that sounds like Swans and critics line up to wax poetic about the genius at work in their dark artistry, all sentence-wank and extremity of phrase. Whatever. Fact is that Swans have always been a challenging listen — yes, even The Burning World — and for as long as they want to, they’ll continue to be one. With Gira‘s laser-guided übersneer in “Just a Little Boy (For Chester Burnett),” the derisive laughter that follows, the teeth-grinding build of “Screen Shot” that finally and thankfully pays itself off near the end of the song, the base judgment in “Some Things We Do,” particularly the first half of To be Kind, with “Screen Shot” (8:05), “Just a Little Boy (for Chester Burnett)” (12:40), “A Little God in My Hands” (7:08), “Bring the Sun/Toussaint l’Ouverture” (34:05) and “Some Things We Do” (5:09), isn’t. The second disc comes across friendlier, if one can use that word, with “She Loves Us” (17:01), Kirsten Supine” (10:32), “Oxygen” (7:59), “Nathalie Neal” (10:15) the “To be Kind” (8:23) — at very least the titles speak to ideas of love and life, whereas on “Some Things We Do,” those are broken down into a listing, “We laugh, we drink, we fuck,” and so on. “Screen Shot,” with its gradual beginning and eight-minute build, sets a precedent for several of the other pieces to follow. A course is established and the journey is undertaken. Elements are added on the way and a build begins. That build is carried out over some stretch of time, skillful, linear. They keep it going. Tension mounts. Just when they get to the point where you feel like your head is going to explode if the song doesn’t, they hold it. That’s what they sustain. The payoff isn’t the climax — it’s that moment just before that gets drawn out. “Bring the Sun/Toussaint l’Ouverture” does this twice. “She Loves Us,” with its frenetic bassline, percussive tribalism and backing drone, also does it twice, deconstructing itself to disjointed noise both times. “Kirsten Supine” culminates in a stomp and wash. “Oxygen” builds on that with horns and slamming single hits, and though “Nathalie Neal” is more straightforward, its chanting chorus providing an incantation of a hook, it too comes to a head before dropping out to the quiet conclusion that continues on with the closing title-track before it hits its own stride of impossible tension and release.

What does all this do? What’s the point? I’m not going to claim to know, or to understand To be Kind or to speak to the motivations behind what Swans do. You know how you go to work every day and do your job? You know how some people write three-minute pop songs? You know how I sit here every fucking day and type wordy shit that probably nobody makes it this far into? Well, To be Kind is the Swans version of that. It’s what they do, what at this point they’re able to sustain themselves doing through releasing on Gira‘s Young God Records — the album is also out on Mute outside the US — and it happens that the drives and impulses they follow lead them to create a work like “A Little God in My Hands,” or “Nathalie Neal.” Gira is the figurehead and the principle voice, but these 10 songs were constructed and guided into being what they are, and even the most churning of arrangements never sounds haphazard. Three albums back into their tenure, Swans are no longer the band who just reunited, and they’re no longer the band who had to then follow that reunion offering. They’re the band who create what they create regardless of expectation or reception, who move through movements with precision and deranged grace, and who, more than 30 years since their first album release, still sound like they’re expanding their breadth. The Seer had its long-form works in its 32-minute title-track and 23-minute closer “The Apostate,” and in some ways To be Kind seems to follow a similar ethic, but the dynamic within the group continues to develop, and their impulse to bring in outsiders only adds to the overarching diversity of sound throughout. Through all of this, however, Swans do not lose sight of the threat at the center of their sound or the push away from convention that has led them to such an individualized place. To be Kind brims with intent, but it still feels like just a moment captured, and for as long as Swans continue to progress, it will remain a step along their unique path that so often sounds like it’s bringing us all into oblivion.

Swans, “Oxygen” from To be Kind (2014)

Swans on Thee Facebooks

To be Kind at Young God Records

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