PRESS
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Music and Riots Glowing Man Review
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Swans - The Glowing Man Since their resurrection in 2010, each new Swans album has arrived garnered with ever more heft and gravitas. Michael Gira and this current incarnation of his soul-scouring operation have coordinated a tightly focused schedule of recording and touring which now seems to have reached its peak and finale with this almighty piece of work. The fourth “official” album since that surprise renewal of the Swans name and the third in a row comprising a mammoth two-hour running time to drag you head first through varying degrees of intensity. The work of Gira and his cohorts has come to increasingly resemble the densely-packed and weighty cinema of a filmmaker such as Nuri Bilge Ceylan, with each release growing in magnitude and scope as it determinedly scrutinises and chips away at the vast unknowable rock-face of human emotion. With this comparison in mind, The Glowing Man is Swans’ “Winter Sleep”. “Cloud of Forgetting” begins proceedings as epic sweep across an immense tundra of the mind’s eye, a scene-setting while Gira sings as though to a sick dog which shivers and shakes in the dark. Wired and highly-strung guitars are embellished by keyboard swathes akin to Alice Coltrane’s astral......
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Vulture Hound Glowing Man Review
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Swans – The Glowing Man (Album Review) By Toby Fountain Swans are one of the last great vanguards of rock music. With vast swathes of the guitar music landscape surrendering to revivalism and outright derivitism, Swans and their new album, The Glowing Man, are a nostalgic reminder of rock’s bolder and more exciting past. We are told by bandleader Michael Gira that this is the final chapter of the bands current incarnation which emerged in 2010 with My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky. The Glowing Man is a poignant summarisation of this period, a collage of the band’s relentlessly experimental and eclectic stylistic journey that has played out over the past six years. At almost two hours in length and boasting three twenty-minute long ‘epics’, the album continues the mammoth approach ofThe Seer and To be Kind but trades much of their tight, rhythmic intensity, for a more hypnotic and even at times delicate approach. But don’t be deceived, none of the band’s classic darkness has receded. Perhaps the most remarkable element of Swans’ songwriting character on this record is the intricate balance of hypnotic beauty and ominous intensity. Throughout the record these two elements are constantly at......
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Nakid Magazine NY Concert Review
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SWANS: ‘THE AGONY OF MICHAEL GIRA’ LIVE IN NYC Text + photography by: A.F. CORTES Every Swans show seems like a masochistic ordeal of sonic survival. Michael Gira and company are on a mission to annihilate the audiences’ ears with a constant repetition of monotonous riffs at the decibels of a volcano’s explosion. But, as in any dysfunctional relationship, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In this iteration the band feels heavier in layered melodies and lighter in percussion. The first noticeable element was the absence of the great shirtless-gladiator-looking percussionist Thor Harris. Some audience members dared to ask about him, but as usual, Michael Gira’s stage persona only cares about the present and never dwells in the past, yet he answered starting the next song with an unfazed look. The sound is subtly different; more ambient noises are in the background, yet the intensity of every Swans show is intact. The rest of the band were the usual musicians, with the exception of a keyboard player replacing Thor’s corner on stage; the power of the drummer Phil Puleo, the stoic attitude of Norman Westerberg on guitar, the energy of Christopher Pravdica on bass, the intensity of......
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dmndr Interview
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SWANS INTERVIEW: PROBING MICHAEL GIRA’S BRAIN BEFORE SOLD OUT SHOWS IN NYSOPHIE LUO DAILY DMND INTERVIEWSMichael Gira speaks slowly, thoughtfully, pausing often to consider his words before moving on to the next phrase. One gets the sense that he has much to consider these days. Gira’s band, Swans, has built its reputation slowly but steadily over the past 35 years, from being a relentless rule-breaker emerging from the New York no wave scene of the 1980s to a venerated art-rock group now writing its own end despite critical acclaim and a loyal fan base. On Swans’ latest (and final) album, The Glowing Man, Gira grapples, as always, with difficult themes: doubt, agony, love, addiction, goodbyes, assault — this last particularly vexing in the face of rape allegations raised against Gira earlier this year. As Swans embarks on an 18-month post-release tour before bringing the curtain down on its current seven-person configuration, Sophie Luo spoke with Gira on farewells to the familiar, the significance of death, and obese men wearing diapers. SL: How did you meet Okkyung Lee and decide to collaborate with her on this album and tour? MG: I was doing a solo show in… I think it was......
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Pelican Magazine Glowing Man Review
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REVIEW: SWANS – THE GLOWING MAN (YOUNG GOD) 9 out of 10It’s here, this is it, the grand finale, the last hurrah for Michael Gira and the gang, the swansong of it all (pun intended), and it couldn’t possibly get better than this. Swans have had a pretty eventful career over the years in which Gira was the only consistent member, although Norman Westberg was present for all except one. Beginning in the early 80s producing snarling, mechanical no-wave with albums like Public Castration is a Good Idea (yes that is an actual album title, makes for a good t-shirt), and Filth, the best workout album ever produced. Jarboe joined the band in the later part of the decade and their sound acquired a dimension beyond blind rage and fury with albums like Children of God. Then in 1996 they produced Soundtracks for the Blind – a behemoth of an album assembled from decaying tapes chopped and screwed in a way so as to create something quite unlike that which had been seen before in rock music. They broke up, declared Swans are Dead, then reformed in 2010, and it is in this revival that the we find ourselves now. In......