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The Skinny - To Be Kind Review
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Swans – To Be Kind 4/5 stars ALBUM REVIEW BY COLM MCAULIFFE. PUBLISHED 30 APRIL 2014 Swans have consistently offered the most brutal of listening endurance tests with the maniacal Michael Gira spitting blood and venom at the wheel. This laudable commitment to extremity has its roots in the early 1980s downtown New York rock community but, on the evidence of To Be Kind, Gira and co. have thoroughly outlasted and outperformed their atonal contemporaries and honed their hostile grind into a sinewy and slinky onslaught of light and shade. The album displays much more diversity than its immediate predecessors; hear the brass-infused near-merriment of Oxygen, the skittering synths and chants of A Little God In My Hands, the accelerated chainsaw gang menace of opener Screen Shot or the seductive ambience of Kirsten Supine, replete with self-combustion outro. Despite the two-hour plus running time, Swans appear to be – gasp! – enjoying themselves; they’re still staring into the abyss but the abyss is no longer staring back. Anyway, never mind the length, feel and breathe the quality. ...
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Q Magazine To Be Kind review
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Pitchfork Best New Track
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Swans "Oxygen" Young God / Mute By Stuart Berman; April 15, 2014 The latter-day Swans have become synonymous with a certain imposing sprawl, specializing in the sort of colossal, half-hour long pieces that require you to book off time in your iCal just to listen to them. By comparison, “Oxygen”, the second teaser released from the upcoming To Be Kind, is practically a pop single, not just for its relavite brevity (only eight minutes!), but its structural simplicity and jugular-clenching force. Forsaking the band’s usual ominous build-ups/breakdowns and carefully orchestrated chaos for sheer, unrelenting pig-fuckery, “Oxygen”—which shares a title, some lyrics, and absolutely nothing else with a 2010 solo-acoustic Michael Gira track—is the closest thing to a straight-ahead rocker the 21st-century Swans have produced. (And tellingly, it’s the rare To Be Kind track previewed on last year’s live set, Not Here/Not Now, that came out of the studio sounding just as filthy as it did in concert.) It’s a reminder that, even as the scope of their albums turns evermore epic, Swans still belong to a tradition of deranged, debased punk that the connects the bruising attack of the Jesus Lizard’s “Wheelchair Epidemic,” the woof-woof feralism of the Birthday Party’s “Happy Birthday,” and the sax ‘n’ violence of the Stooges’ “Fun......
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Dangerous Minds To Be Kind Feature
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SWANS’ MICHAEL GIRA ON THEIR FORTHCOMING TRIPLE ALBUM ‘TO BE KIND’ Michael Gira’s band Swans have shape-shifted but plenty. They made their reputation with an extraordinarily punishing and shockingly nihilistic take on no-wave music in the 1980s, culminating in the colossal masterpiece Children of God. They then curve-balled their fans with relatively introspective and quietly mournful LPs at the decade’s turn. The ‘90s saw further experimentation, ending with the final album of their first incarnation, Soundtracks for the Blind in 1996. But whatever Swans’ approach, be it the bludgeoning riffs of their early years, the tape loop experiments of the mid ‘80s, or the early ‘90s acoustic efforts, the band’s oeuvre has been united, partly by musical and lyrical darkness, certainly, but also by the ability of all the band’s many lineups to conjure the elemental. Swans went silent in 1997, after which Gira continued to work both solo and in The Angels of Light. Then, in 2010, Swans reappeared, with Gira and stalwart guitarist Norman Westberg leading an otherwise entirely new lineup. Quoth Gira, from a recent phone conversation: I just wanted to continue making music. I was doing the Angels of Light project for 13 years and I was growing......
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Noisey.com premiere To Be Kind Sampler
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CHECK OUT AN EXCLUSIVE TEASER OF SWANS' NEW LP 'TO BE KIND' BECAUSE YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELF Some records you throw on while you do shit like organize you closet or clean the toilet, tuning in and out while you focus on the mundane. But for some records, you light a candle, get a solid pair of headphones, settle in and listen to in its entirety. Swans falls into that latter category. A Swans record is a journey; songs build and expand to come crashing down again, and there is a certain hypnotic, almost shamanistic quality to Gira's voice to lead you through it all. Swans records demand your total and complete attention. The NYC-based band have a new album coming with To Be Kind, their third studio effort since reforming four-plus years ago. Due on May 12th, the LP features appearances from St. Vincent, Bill Reiflin (Ministry, King Crimson, RevCo, etc), Little Annie, and more across it's ten tracks logging around two hours in length. It's an epic journey and one that is chronicled in the teaser sampler above, available for the first time here at Noisey. Check that out, as well as a pair of full songs from To Be Kind below.......