PRESS
-
Vanity Fair M. Gira Interview
()
Swans’ Michael Gira On Dissolving His Band’s Current Lineup The architect of the notoriously loud band’s sound discusses its current cast’s final record out this week. BY SPIKE CARTERhttp://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2016/06/swans-michael-gira-on-dissolving-his-bands-current-lineup In 2009, Michael Gira decided to breathe new life into his band Swans. Originally critic-dubbed “art-rock” contemporaries of Sonic Youth in the early 80s, the band underwent several aesthetic cycles with a rotating cast of characters, all while remaining ranked as one of music’s loudest entities. In 2010, after a 13-year hiatus, a newly consistent lineup of musicians has yielded some of the most exciting, intense music of Gira’s storied career. Despite success, Swans’s upcoming LP The Glowing Man (June 17, via Gira’s own Young God Records) has been announced by Gira, 62, as the last from this specific group of members. “I’ll continue to make music under the name Swans, with a revolving cast of collaborators,” he said when announcing the record. VF.com talked with Gira before he embarks on the climactic post-release world tour. Vanity Fair: When you announced The Glowing Man’s release and touring schedule, you said it would be the final offering from this particular lineup of Swans. What went into that decision? Michael Gira: Um, seven years......
-
Drowned In Sound Glowing Man Review
()
Swans - The Glowing Manby Benjamin Bland http://drownedinsound.com/releases/19480/reviews/4150146 The Glowing Man is set to be the end of an(other) era of Swans, an era in which Michael Gira and company have firmly reasserted their position as one of (if not the) most important bands in existence. It was announced last year that this, the band’s fourth album since reactivation in 2010, would be the last with this line-up. Anyone who has seen Swans over the last six years will be acutely aware that this has not been a 'reunion' in any traditional sense of the word. The combination of Gira, guitarists Christoph Hahn and Norman Westberg, bassist Chris Pradvica, and drummers Thor Harris and Phil Puleo (aided by multi-instrumentalist Bill Rieflin in the studio) has proved to be the most devastatingly effective one in the band’s lengthy history. Much of the success of the Swans reunion has been the sextet’s ability to simultaneously up the stakes across all departments. Comparisons with the group’s earliest material might well be unnecessary, but it’s hard to dismiss the idea that somehow this incarnation of Swans has managed to be heavier and more uncompromising whilst simultaneously being more spiritual and – at times –......
-
Sydney Morning Herald Glowing Man Review
()
SwansTHE GLOWING MAN (Mute/Create Control)★★★★ The Glowing Man is, according to Michael Gira, a record in which the Swans leader – 62 years old, 14 LPs in – stares into the face of mortality, infinity, God. It sounds like it, too; such lofty thematic ambition matched across a two-hour triple-album striving for the firmament, the transcendent. Its road-tested, drone-laced, doom-etched jams are foreboding, colossal. The opening suite, Cloud Of Forgetting/Cloud Of Unknowing is 38 minutes of thunderous drums, storm and stress; the title-track a 28-minute opus of agitato guitars and fervent moans. It ends with Finally Peace, whose sing-song mantra and tender harmonies find, at last, equanimity, acceptance. Anthony Carewhttp://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/eg-album-reviews-june-17-20160609-gpfbkt...
-
Spectrum Culture Glowing Man Review
()
Swans: The Glowing ManIt is safe to say that this is the best, most ambitious formation of the band ever assembled.by Jake Cole http://spectrumculture.com/2016/06/16/swans-glowing-man/ As the current iteration of Swans, Michael Gira’s mighty, terrifying unit of unclassifiable noise, reaches its conclusion, it is safe to say that it is the best, most ambitious formation of the band ever assembled. Originally an outlet for its frontman’s youthful rage and punctuated by deliberately repulsive lyrics that luxuriated in toxic nihilism, the Swans that is releasing The Glowing Man represents something more reflective of its namesake’s beauty. If 2014’s To Be Kind found the group wrangling its epic industrial squall into a monstrous parallel of Indian classical music, all spiritual release, their final album for the time being builds to a calmer benediction. As with all of the band’s post-reformation albums, The Glowing Man was honed on the road, morphing out of improvised departures from prior songs and gradually sculpted into a clearer shape. Anyone who saw the band live on their recent tour or got their hands on the crowd-funded live album The Gate will have heard tracks like “Cloud of Forgetting” and “Frankie M” in gestational form. The most curious element......
-
Howl and Echoes Glowing Man Review
()
Swans’ “The Glowing Man” May Be Their Best AlbumAlex Crellinhttp://howlandechoes.com/2016/06/swans-the-glowing-man-is-probably-their-best-album/Swans may just be one of the greatest bands of our time. They consistently deliver phenomenally weird and creative sounds, telling a story with music like none other. With an opening line like that, you might already know my opinion on their new album, The Glowing Man; it’s brilliant. If you came into this review looking for a short summary as to whether you should buy this album, here it is: Yes, absolutely. It’s a two-and-a-half hour epic, and may be Swans’ greatest effort to date. It delivers on everything one would want out of a Swans album, from weird and wonderful music to dark and thought-provoking theming. In a year that’s seen the release of a new Radiohead LP, a new album from Kanye West and other heavyweight musical legends such as Mogwai, The Glowing Man is sitting pretty on top of my album of the year list as it stands. First, a bit of history. Swans was the brainchild of singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Michael Gira, who formed the band in 1982 with Jonathan Kane, Mojo, Thurston Moore, Sue Hanel and Daniel Galli-Duani. This roster didn’t last too long, however, with......