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Under the Radar Magazine | "To Be Kind" Review
Only when it's too late do you realize that "Screen Shot," the opening track on Swans' new magnum opus, is the sound of being stalked. Michael Gira begins calmly uttering a string of seemingly random words, and as they begin to take on a dark logic, his demeanor is that of one who has all the time in the world. By the end of the piece, the room seems drained of oxygen as the music has grown as a shrill, pounding presence and Gira's mantra becomes more direct: "Love now/Breathe now/Hear now."... Read more...
Time Out New York | Swans Feature
There’s no obvious explanation for Swans’ sudden popularity among hip young connoisseurs of left-field rock music. Formed circa 1982, gone by 1997 and revived in 2010, the NYC art-noise behemoth attracted its largest audiences yet with a sprawling 2012 triple LP (The Seer), unrelenting two-hour gigs, and a lack of regard for both commercial relevance and bankable nostalgia. Granted, the band now executes its signature bludgeoning locksteps with a more groove-oriented, less monochromatic feel, but the overall vibe remains stubbornly grand, physical and excessive. Which isn’t to say that Swans’... Read more...
Washington Post | "To Be Kind" Review
Four years ago, and after a 13-year hiatus, Swans frontman and mainstay Michael Gira assembled a new lineup for his New York no-wave band. The new band has been able to resurrect its original post-punk/noise-rock intensity, and its three subsequent albums stand up almost seamlessly next to its original recordings.But age has not made Gira succinct: The newest of those albums, “To Be Kind,” is a two-disc, two-hour recording. The shortest track is five minutes; the longest stretches for nearly 35. Like most Swans albums, “To Be Kind” is not... Read more...
Pitchfork Interview with Michael Gira
Sixty-year-old art-rock godhead Michael Gira talks about how Swans managed to return without losing any potency, the impressive power of St. Vincent and Nina Simone, and how nearly choking to death inspired his band's latest opus. The Seer was the kind of record that seemed impossible to follow up. The nearly-two-hour 2012 LP nailed a deeply transcendent mix of drone, noise, and blues; songs that stretched to 20 and 30 minutes never felt excessive or overdone. It was my favorite album that year by a mile and contained some of the... Read more...
All Music | "To Be Kind" Review
Let no one say Michael Gira doesn't have something to say and the will to say it: 2014's To Be Kind is the third album from the Swans since he reassembled the band in 2010, and it's his second album in a row that spans two discs and runs over two hours. Gira likes to work on a large musical canvas, and he gives himself all the room he needs on To Be Kind -- "Bring the Sun/Toussaint L'Ouverture" alone is the length of an ordinary album at a shade over 34 minutes.Gira's vision is a bit less dark in... Read more...
Scene Point Blank Interview with Michael Gira
Swans are an evergreen, diverse band. In the 1980s they created brutal industrial rock, attracting fans ranging from heavy metal bros to friggin’ Kurt Cobain (he listed 1984’sYoung God EP as one of his all-time favorite albums). They shifted towards ambient with 1996’s Soundtracks for the Blind; Terrorizer’s Nick Terry gave it five stars, simply calling it “fucking awesome.” 16 years later, Swans were obliterated with praise. Their grand 2012 album The Seer garnered a 9.0 at Scene Point Blank, and was called one of the top 10 albums of the year by many music outlets.... Read more...
"To Be Kind" Review | Stereogum
Have you ever heard voices? The sound of people echoing around in your head, unsettling you deeply, even when you know they’re not real? I have. Only a couple of times. Didn’t last long. I was at the library near my house one day once, maybe nine years old, spending hours paging through old movie reference books because I was a weird kid, almost falling asleep, when I heard my mom’s voice. She wasn’t talking, exactly. Or maybe she was. I could definitely hear my name a few times, but... Read more...
NPR First Listen | "To Be Kind"
Only on occasion does it make sense to praise music as scary, and somehow many of those occasions coincide with Swans sending new sounds out into the world. Since 1982, when the band emerged from the same New York "no wave" scene as noise-rock acts like Sonic Youth, Swans' seething intensity has been a default mode. Every element of the Swans sound is alarming, brutal, dark and sublimely beautiful for all the rage that gets articulated — and the sense of release that gets promised, too. After a fateful demise... Read more...
Kerrang! Magazine | "To Be Kind"
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The Line of Best Fit, Album of the Week: "To Be Kind"
You’ve probably seen them; they’re everywhere these days: pictures of nice pleasant beaches, gently undulating hills, or soft dappled light flowing through breaks in a woodland canopy, all accompanied by some godawful pious quote about the singular importance of kindness. They spread through the internet like an outbreak of cholera. Kurt Vonnegut: ‘There’s only one rule that I know of, babies – God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ Henry James: ‘Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be... Read more...

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