Classic or Dud: Swans

*one of the

First round of tour dates announced, you lucky lucky Americans.

09-28 Philadelphia, PA - Trocadero Theater
09-29 Washington, DC - Black Cat
09-30 Boston, MA - Middle East
10-01 Montreal, Quebec - Pop Montreal Festival
10-02 Toronto, Ontario - Lee's Palace
10-04 Detroit, MI - Crofoot Ballroom
10-05 Chicago, IL - Bottom Lounge
10-08 Brooklyn, NY - Brooklyn Masonic Temple
10-09 New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom
10-22-24 Birmingham, England - Supersonic Festival

Classic up through Children of Light. Good all the way through. No duds.

tix on sale for philly, nyc, and boston now

uk tour dates:

October 21 Cyprus Avenue, Cork

October 22 Button Factory, Dublin

October 24 Supersonic Festival, Birmingham

October 25 Arches, Glasgow

October 28 Koko, London

October 29 Uni Stylus, Leeds

October 30 Academy, Manchester

I shall Koko.

That's the Sunday of Supersonic then, presumably in the slot Goblin were in last year.

Oh jaysus Koko, why?

Anyhoo, Neubauten weekend then Swans a few days later, going to be a heavy October

Also Brighton on Oct 27, I'll be there and at Koko.

Brussels, Ancienne Belgique, Nov. 25

and – omg – Vienna Arena, 7 Dec. Now we're talking.

Vienna - woohoo!

man I wanna go to vienna

see you there Jack

No Newcastle?? Motherfucker...

Band pics, cover art (so that's the album title then?)

http://younggodrecords.com/Gallery/?C=116

Oh, it is.

"Michael Gira announced on June 13, 2010, through the Young God Records page on Facebook and his personal Facebook account, that the next Swans album will be titled My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky, and is set to be released on September 14, 2010." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swans_(band)#Post-breakup_.26_reformation_.281997-present.29 )

WAIT! The drummer from Shearwater wasn't originally in the Swans, was he??

Okay, he wasn't

How can you guide someone up a rope?

Seriously seriously thinking I should go see them at Lee's.

Had you ever seen them before? You might as well -- at the same time I just can't get behind a Swans lineup (at this stage) without Jarboe.

I haven't actually seen them before, no! Big problem is I'm not really sure what to expect and not sure I'm in the mood for the old-school grinding but have a suspicion it won't be like the (Jarboe-including) stuff that is the material of theirs that I generally prefer...hm..

it's gonna mostly sound like the live stuff from the last two tours on Swans Are Dead

I don't think so.

New album is one of their best. Seriously. Uncompromising, beautiful, unforgiving.

http://pitchfork.com/news/39600-new-swans-eden-prison/

and samples of all the tracks: http://younggodrecords.com/Releases/Detail.asp?C=2343

I don't think so.

I didn't just pluck the comparison out of the air, that is what Gira himself said it was going to sound like. And from the parts I've heard so far he's not far off.

some of us liked Swans better before Jarboe joined

and some of us even liked swans before and after jarboe joined!

read my sentence again edward

ok brb

lol

I love Jarboe-era Swans but there was something about Filth/Cop/Raping A Slave that was just the most scorched barren incredible wasteland of desolation.

I guess what I'm trying to say is they weren't better before jarboe joined, just a different kind of good? kinda feel like gira was hitting a wall with his sound and jarboe was the wrecking ball he needed to break through, plus public castration is my fave swans alb so

and then the sheer audacity of children of god, I mean a lotta ppl's heads hit the floor when "in my garden" came floating out of their stereos, I know mine did

yeah I adored that record & some of her instrumental/soundscapey stuff worked for me. at the same time though I don't know - Jarboe was practically a Traditional Goth in a lot of ways, which kind of diluted the potency of the Swans project, which was unique. I like "Yum Yab Killers" just fine but it's sort of, I don't know, second-tier for me.

I never saw Jarboe as a goth and I don't think she diluted the potency of Swans at all. That fragility and desolation she brought was a huge plus in my view. Plus if you'd seen her sing "I Crawled" on the '97 tour (captured on Swans Are Dead) I think you might change your mind. Those performances were frighteningly intense, it was as though she was singing from some scary place outside of mind and body.

I never saw Jarboe as a goth

O_O

man I am trying hard to remember what the last time I saw Swans was. Bogart's in Long Beach. 1992 or 93 maybe? Jarboe had about five hundred dollars worth of braids in her hair & gold-flecked makeup, etc. She opened the set with a pretty cool keyboard and voice deal. And a lot of the tape samples that're so scary on Soundtracks and stuff come through her. But I just never felt like her contribution was actually in the spirit of the project. It really did seem to have that "anything scary is cool" vibe instead of Gira's "this is essentially picking up the gauntlet thrown down by Artaud" vibe.

fragility and desolation

frighteningly intense

singing from some scary place outside of mind and body

HOW IS THIS NOT GOTH

I have beef with ilxor right now but nonetheless ilxor otm

HOW IS THIS NOT GOTH

Easy, goth is none of those things.

<3 ya aero

It really did seem to have that "anything scary is cool" vibe instead of Gira's "this is essentially picking up the gauntlet thrown down by Artaud" vibe.

Yeah but by 1988/9 Gira had renounced that vibe in any case, it was no longer part of the project to be "transgressive" or "confrontational". He embraced the Song.

So are we going to have a full on 'what is goth' war now?

What is the definition of goth?

well it's hard to say that Gira ever really embraced "the song" fully - his melodic sense is always subservient to his love of drone (i.e., in song after song, each line of each verse follows an identical melodic line to the line before it; there are some exceptions to this, but they're just that, exceptions). he basically grafted his power-drone sensibilities into song-like environments imo. this has remained true throughout the Angels of Light years, too. the songs have verses and choruses but never a bridge (or "pre-chorus," to use a term I wish could be scrubbed from the language). the chorus melody varies from the verse melody, but usually only in the sense that it seems to complete the melodic line that's been harped on to the point of either transcendence or irritation. so I don't view the changeover as actually so much a change in content as a lowering of the volume, which is fine. but beyond that there's just Gira's writing = interesting and sometimes excellent, Jarboe's writing = seldom either to me.

The term "pre-chorus" always reminds me of when sex ed classes would use the term "pre-cum." O_O

OTM, btw.