PRESS
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The Arts Desk Glowing Man Review
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Swans – The Glowing ManSwans' latest line-up bows out with yet another career bestby Guy Oddyhttp://www.theartsdesk.com/new-music/cd-swans-%E2%80%93-glowing-man The Glowing Man may be the declared final album from Swans’ present line-up, but it is certainly no whimpering exit. On the contrary, it is a thing of intense and magnificent beauty that doesn’t once let up for over two hours – despite several tracks that clock in at well over 20 minutes long. Opaque lyrics and stirring primal music that taps directly into the soul are again the order of the day for Swans. Moving from the Pink Floyd-esque dreamy but dark psychedelia of “Cloud of Forgetting” and “Cloud of Unknowing”, Michael Gira’s crew take in the menacing Gothic country blues of “People Like Us” and a reimagining of Sonic Youth’s “The World Looks Red” (whose lyrics Gira had written in 1982) from Confusion Is Sex with call-and-response vocals and backed by an eerie choir. And that only covers the first disc. If anything, the second half of The Glowing Man ups the ante with the epic “Frankie M” and the dark folk of “When Will I Return?”, before fading out with the almost redemptive and uplifting strum-along of “Finally Peace”. It is......
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Slant Magazine Glowing Man Review
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SwansThe Glowing ManBY JESSE CATALDOhttp://www.slantmagazine.com/music/review/swans-the-glowing-man Ever since Michael Gira reunited his band for 2010's My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, his work as Swans has tended toward increasingly baroque expressions, compounding unvarnished drone minimalism into dizzying configurations. Symphonic in scope, these albums have built on the already-imposing density of Gira's earlier work, with a pair of double albums (2012's The Seer and 2014's To Be Kind) breaking new ground in terms of overall intricacy, heft, and expressively conveyed intensity. This grand approach to songwriting continues to push the limits of the album format onThe Glowing Man, touted as the final outing of this stage of the group's career, which fittingly finds them going out with a fairly exhausting bang. Clocking in at nearly two hours, The Glowing Man is a chock-a-block song cycle stuffed with concepts, textures, and ideas in which a prevailing air of anxiety is conveyed through arduous slow-burn structures. A rattling rollercoaster of dread, the album moves from moments of peaceful contemplation to pummeling drone-metal ferocity to rococo sonic disorder, demanding a taxing amount of time and attention to chart its many transitions and maneuvers. While the breaks between tracks are......
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MOJO Magazine Glowing Man 4 Star Review
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Back Beat Seattle Album Review: Swans’ The Glowing Man
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Album Review: Swans’ The Glowing Man Album Review: Swans‘ The Glowing Man~Nick Nihil It’s both amazing and not too surprising at this point that a band as visionary, talented, and experienced as Swans can continue to evolve and deepen their uniquely monolithic attack. They’re certainly not the only band identified by heavy, droning dirges that find meditative peace within force and volume, but they’re the most compelling, versatile, and purposeful. I know how giddily I gushed about their last record, To Be Kind, calling it perhaps the finest record they ever made, which is particularly impressive considering their record before that, The Seer, could well have made that claim. Apparently their default setting is to make the best, most ‘Swans’ record ever with each new release. Geez guys, are you too cool to make something ‘meh’ once in a while? My reviews are getting redundant. Swans – The Glowing Man This record finds them dialing back the frequency of their ground-shaking crescendos, but not the power, developing the kinds of ethereal textures reminiscent of their early ‘90s work (reminiscent, but not repeating) and taking some surprising stylistic left turns. The melancholic prayer of an opener, “Cloud of Forgetting,” shuffles in......
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UNCUT Q&A + Glowing Man Review
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