Accurate though it would be to say that the music of Swans is about the here and the now, the sense of elation and transcendence that the group aims at with their music is one where “here” and “now” become moot categories. As Gira has noted in multiple interviews, he holds no regard for mining the past out of any desire to re-create mythical “good old days”. Though old Swans cuts like “Coward” and “Sex God Sex” cropped up in recent setlists, on the whole the band’s focus is on generating new music and new experiences. Part of Gira’s philosophy for Swans 2.0, implied by the use of “reconstitution” rather than “reunion”, is a strong rejection of looking backward. That devotion, however, is only going to be tested from here on out as Swans continue to evolve. When I spoke with Gira about To Be Kind, he confessed: “It requires an active devotion.” At two hours each, these records provide listeners with a lot to be entertained by-but, like anything, there’s a price. While there are characteristics of what might be called “Swans 1.0” that remain in “Swans 2.0”-namely punishing walls of sound, expansive track lengths, and grim subject matter-the music Gira and his band of volume torturers have been making since Rope to the Sky is of a class all its own.įollowing the concise 44 minute runtime of Rope to the Sky, Swans decided to go full-hog, churning out two slabs of rock and roll at its most brutalizing: 2012’s The Seer and the recently released To Be Kind. To those diehard fans of the innovative rock outfit that waited 14 years following 1996’s Soundtracks for the Blind, Gira’s words were-and still are-appropriately sage. Michael Gira was not making a mere semantic distinction when, following the announcements in 2010 that Swans would be coming out with a new album, he insisted that the group convened to make My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky would be a reconstitution, not a reunion.
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