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drowned in sound swans review
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by Noel Gardnea heap of locusts in a bowl Swans My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky Type: Album Release date: 20/09/2010 Artists:Swans » Label:Young God Records » Your Rating: Review this release Add to a list... by Noel Gardner▾ 4 comments 10:16 September 16th, 2010 The earnestness with which Michael Gira has thrown himself into the task of reviving the Swans (he resolutely doesn’t consider it a reunion) has resulted in an extensive tour, to follow the release of this brand new album. Reasonably enough, the new lineup have posed for some photos, which you can see for yourself on the Young God Records website and which are magnificently sinister, without any obvious effort to be so. They look like police station mugshots of people arrested for crack possession; Christoph Hahn may have been carved from sandstone and Norman Westberg, whose tenure in the band dates as far back as 1983, appears to have had the same Ian Rush-esque moustache for the last 25 years. Insofar as the snaps convey the gladiatorial might and gnarled temperament on show on My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky, it’s an object lesson in......
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drowned in sound swans review
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by Noel Gardnera heap of locusts in a bowl Swans My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky Type: Album Release date: 20/09/2010 Artists:Swans » Label:Young God Records » Your Rating: Review this release Add to a list... by Noel Gardner▾ 4 comments 10:16 September 16th, 2010 The earnestness with which Michael Gira has thrown himself into the task of reviving the Swans (he resolutely doesn’t consider it a reunion) has resulted in an extensive tour, to follow the release of this brand new album. Reasonably enough, the new lineup have posed for some photos, which you can see for yourself on the Young God Records website and which are magnificently sinister, without any obvious effort to be so. They look like police station mugshots of people arrested for crack possession; Christoph Hahn may have been carved from sandstone and Norman Westberg, whose tenure in the band dates as far back as 1983, appears to have had the same Ian Rush-esque moustache for the last 25 years. Insofar as the snaps convey the gladiatorial might and gnarled temperament on show on My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky, it’s an object lesson in......
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http://soundsxp.com/artman2/publish/albums/swans_my_father_will_guide_me_up_a_rope_to_the_sky.shtml
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Article written by Matt H -a hole in the universeSwans My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky Young God Article written by Matt H - Sep 16, 2010 Swans - American Rope Trick "Swans Are Not Dead" came the announcement a few months back to no little excitement round these parts. Judging by the photos in the album "Swans are Undead" might have been nearer the mark. Michael Gira is at pains to point out that this isn't a reunion, it's him moving forward again. Quite who he thought might accuse him of reviving one of the most aggressively uncommercial bands of all time for anything other than artistic purposes isn't clear. But who cares? This is a great record. It establishes its distance from Gira's nu-folk friendly Angels of Light project from the off. No Words/No Thoughts' opening bells dissolve into trademark punishing thunderous rhythms squirming guitar and bandsaw sounds before (un)settling into a slinking, rhythmic intonation of a song. It's something of a surprise then when Reeling the Liars In follows it with a swaying Americana drinking song - albeit one with a gentle, righteous brutality. And so the new Swans do in fact......
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ny times and montreal gazette live swans reviews
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2 peoplethe pillars of a shemale herculesSWANS LIVE MONTREAL REVIEW Pop Montreal 2010: Swans, with Baby Dee and Lily Fawn at Le National, Oct. 1 By Jordan ZIVITZ SAT, OCT 2 2010 Speaking to The Gazette recently, Michael Gira summarized his rationale for resurrecting Swans after a 13-year deep freeze: "I want to be in the centre of a very large, overwhelming, body-destroying sound." He wasn't kidding. The overwhelming part started Friday at Le National before the band even began playing, with a queasy taped drone piped in at daunting volume for 10 minutes. The body-destroying part came soon enough. After Samsonian percussionist Thor Harris hammered out a mesmerizing pattern on a six-foot-tall rack of bells, the rest of the sextet joined in the hammering on a lengthy instrumental that was brutally elemental and left the audience visibly gasping for air. It was a shock to everyone's system -- not least of all diehards who doubted the band's new incarnation would live up to the legend. It was nearly half an hour into the show before Gira sang. When he did, the ominous twang employed in Angels of Light -- the dark roots collective he initiated after Swans' demise in......
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bbc swans review
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Louis Pattison 2010-09-13http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/85gwhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/85gw Swans My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky Review Album. Released 20 September 2010. BBC Review A majestic return and, let us hope, a harbinger of more to come. Louis Pattison 2010-09-13 Swans, rightly, have a fearsome reputation. Born in 1982 out of the flux of New York’s artistic, abrasive no-wave scene, they quickly became a byword for rock-in-extremity, songs like Raping a Slave and Time Is Money (Bastard) hurricanes of sound atop which frontman Michael Giradeclaimed transgressive lyrics in guttural bellows. But that is not the full story. Over the years, Swans developed a depth to match this extremity. The addition of vocalist/keyboardist Jarboe added a brooding beauty to the band’s palette, and by 1987’s Children of God, Swans’ attack had relented some, their noise barrage reshaped into a brooding, gothic Americana of cutthroat blues-rock, shrill strings and eerie, Pentecostal hymnals. Following Swans’ split, this was territory Gira would explore further with his new band,Angels of Light – softening, at times, but never mellowing. And while My Father Will Guide Me… sees Gira return to the Swans name for the first time since 1997, the record itself gives little sense of a......