Artist: Swans
Album: To Be Kind
Source: It's a secret
Pre-listening Notes: Swans are a tough band to describe. They were around for 15 years originally, then reunited about 4 years ago, so they are coming close to being a band for 20 years, although they started over 30 years ago. I didn't get into them until during the breakup. I started just checking them out because I saw a bunch of bands, and musicians, that I liked name checking them. This is album thirteen total and the third since reuniting. The last one, The Seer, was one of my favorites from 2012. It's post everything (rock/punk/no wave/experimental/art rock/whatever) and it's all those things at the same time. It takes some focus to really enjoy, but once you do, you can put it on and just kind of let it wash over you. This is broken down into two discs, with five songs each. The shortest song is five minutes long and the longest is about thirty four. I'm going to give this a whirl with headphones on.
Initial Reaction: It starts off with an intro of bass, drums, and a little synthesizer. The vocals kick in and the song plods along adding in some guitar and piano. The song is giving me a sense of anticipation. There is some chaos to the song towards the back end adding some additional instrumentation and hitting that point I was anticipating. That was a nice build up to the ending. So far, one for one on songs.
Random Thoughts: Nice stoned out feel to the start of this second song. Nice and minimal, with some parts where Michael Gira going off vocally. The laughter part sounded pretty neat in my headphones. As it plods along, it starts to intensify in parts, with some other sound effects popping in along with more instances of the laughter parts. The song has a definite bluesy feel to it, which makes sense considering the title references Chester Burnett, also known as Howlin' Wolf, a fairly prominent blues musician. Track three, A Little God in My Hands, kicks in with a funky, upbeat intro. A decent contrast to the downer feel of the previous song. Nice break into a chaotic noise part and then back to the rhythm of the opening part again. The layers of sound at the end of this song are exploding through the headphones and I am loving this. The next song, or what appears to be two songs combined, name checks the man who lead the revolution that created the independent state of Haiti (I didn't know that off the top of my head, I had to look it up). It's thirty four minutes long and starts off with some heavy drumming and a droney guitar riff. It then drops down to a slow, droney pace again, with another anticipation build up. Then about nine minutes into this song, it hits me hard. This is excellent! The second song in this piece starts off with more of the experimental side, with Michael Gira just yelling Toussaint L'Ouverture's name and it ends with a noisey, chaotic part. The final track on disc one is a song called Some Things We Do, which is very minimal musically and vocally it is just a list of, quite literally, things that human beings do. And on to disc two. She Loves Us! picks right up and has a similar vibe to some songs on disc one. It's got the droney parts, mixed with more spastic parts, and also contains the lyrics "fuck" and "Hallelujah" probably close to 100 times each. Oxygen starts with fuzzed out guitar and then kicks in with a nice faster paced song. With only two more songs, Oxygen has been my favorite of the songs, so far. And the album ends on the title track. Which opens with very sparse music, which is mostly piano, and vocals. It kicks in about the five minute mark and ends chaotically.
Final Reaction: This band is not for everyone, that's for sure. For me, this was pretty great, though. Listening the first time through headphones was a great idea. In the future, I can see me probably only listening to one disc at a time, as two full hours of this got a little tough to digest towards the end. This is all over the map, but it has a definite underlying tone and theme that stays throughout all ten songs. I started to lose a little focus towards the end. This fell a little short of what The Seer did for me, but ultimately it's definitely something I'll come back to.
Final Grade: 8.5/10
Album: To Be Kind
Source: It's a secret
Pre-listening Notes: Swans are a tough band to describe. They were around for 15 years originally, then reunited about 4 years ago, so they are coming close to being a band for 20 years, although they started over 30 years ago. I didn't get into them until during the breakup. I started just checking them out because I saw a bunch of bands, and musicians, that I liked name checking them. This is album thirteen total and the third since reuniting. The last one, The Seer, was one of my favorites from 2012. It's post everything (rock/punk/no wave/experimental/art rock/whatever) and it's all those things at the same time. It takes some focus to really enjoy, but once you do, you can put it on and just kind of let it wash over you. This is broken down into two discs, with five songs each. The shortest song is five minutes long and the longest is about thirty four. I'm going to give this a whirl with headphones on.
Initial Reaction: It starts off with an intro of bass, drums, and a little synthesizer. The vocals kick in and the song plods along adding in some guitar and piano. The song is giving me a sense of anticipation. There is some chaos to the song towards the back end adding some additional instrumentation and hitting that point I was anticipating. That was a nice build up to the ending. So far, one for one on songs.
Random Thoughts: Nice stoned out feel to the start of this second song. Nice and minimal, with some parts where Michael Gira going off vocally. The laughter part sounded pretty neat in my headphones. As it plods along, it starts to intensify in parts, with some other sound effects popping in along with more instances of the laughter parts. The song has a definite bluesy feel to it, which makes sense considering the title references Chester Burnett, also known as Howlin' Wolf, a fairly prominent blues musician. Track three, A Little God in My Hands, kicks in with a funky, upbeat intro. A decent contrast to the downer feel of the previous song. Nice break into a chaotic noise part and then back to the rhythm of the opening part again. The layers of sound at the end of this song are exploding through the headphones and I am loving this. The next song, or what appears to be two songs combined, name checks the man who lead the revolution that created the independent state of Haiti (I didn't know that off the top of my head, I had to look it up). It's thirty four minutes long and starts off with some heavy drumming and a droney guitar riff. It then drops down to a slow, droney pace again, with another anticipation build up. Then about nine minutes into this song, it hits me hard. This is excellent! The second song in this piece starts off with more of the experimental side, with Michael Gira just yelling Toussaint L'Ouverture's name and it ends with a noisey, chaotic part. The final track on disc one is a song called Some Things We Do, which is very minimal musically and vocally it is just a list of, quite literally, things that human beings do. And on to disc two. She Loves Us! picks right up and has a similar vibe to some songs on disc one. It's got the droney parts, mixed with more spastic parts, and also contains the lyrics "fuck" and "Hallelujah" probably close to 100 times each. Oxygen starts with fuzzed out guitar and then kicks in with a nice faster paced song. With only two more songs, Oxygen has been my favorite of the songs, so far. And the album ends on the title track. Which opens with very sparse music, which is mostly piano, and vocals. It kicks in about the five minute mark and ends chaotically.
Final Reaction: This band is not for everyone, that's for sure. For me, this was pretty great, though. Listening the first time through headphones was a great idea. In the future, I can see me probably only listening to one disc at a time, as two full hours of this got a little tough to digest towards the end. This is all over the map, but it has a definite underlying tone and theme that stays throughout all ten songs. I started to lose a little focus towards the end. This fell a little short of what The Seer did for me, but ultimately it's definitely something I'll come back to.
Final Grade: 8.5/10
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