On June 23, Swans return with The Beggar, the 16th album for this enduring outfit. Michael Gira is in the driver’s seat as always, writing and singing the songs, playing acoustic guitar and also producing. Although loaded with contributors familiar to Swans and Gira’s other main project Angels of Light, the lineup for this record is a unique one, with Ben Frost returning as a guest Swan on guitar, synthesizer and sound manipulations. Expanding upon the mature intensities of Swans’ 21st century output, The Beggar will be available on 2LP in a brown chipboard sleeve with a download card and on 2CD in a brown chipboard digipak through Young God and Mute in the UK.
The numerous eras and progressions of Swans have been well documented. Having roared to life in the early 1980s to deliver a pummeling and precise barrage of no wave-era negativity as captured on Filth (1983), Cop (’84), Greed and Holy Money (both ’86), the band’s sound underwent a significant blossoming with Children of God (’87), a big splash double album that kindled interest from a major label (Uni, a subsidiary of MCA) for a follow-up, the even bigger departure The Burning World (’89).
Produced by Bill Laswell with a handful of outside contributors, The Burning World was a mixed (if underrated) bag that forced a reset for Gira. Forming the Young God label, Swans produced a odds-defying four-album comeback (of sorts), commencing with White Light From the Mouth of Infinity (1991), followed by Love of Life (’92), The Great Annihilator (’95), and Soundtracks for the Blind (’96), after which there was a long hiatus (filled with side-project Angels of Light, amongst other pursuits) that ended with the release of My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky (2010).
Swans’ ’90s run was superb, but the four-album stretch beginning with Rope to the Sky and continuing with The Seer (2012), To Be Kind (’14), and The Glowing Man (’16) is borderline miraculous. Made with a stable lineup that’s tours were jaw-dropping affairs, Gira brought this incarnation of Swans to a close with The Glowing Man’s release, but then came a new Swans record from a distinct if familiar lineup, Leaving Meaning (’19).
Per Gira, it was the inability to take Leaving Meaning out on tour (plus general pandemic malaise) that directly led to the writing of the songs that shape The Beggar, which began (as has been Swans’ 21st century norm) with the solo demo fundraiser album Is There Really a Mind? (’22). The finished work retains the elements that define late Swans; maximal, sprawling instrumental heft that’s precise and often trancelike (“Ebbing” and “Why Can’t I Have What I Want Any Time That I Want?”).
The band, which is made up entirely of returning Swans/Angels of Light vets (including Frost, who played on Leaving Meaning) is as likely to dish out beauty moves (“The Parasite”) as crank out churning post-industrial soundscapes (the title track), with the playing combining seamlessly with the quickly recognizable timber of Gira’s voice, weathered yet strong and capable of great feeling (“Michael is Done” and especially “No More of This”).
But there’s also a continued expansion of the template, as The Beggar continues to hone an appealing spiritual quality that’s extant in Swans’ late work. Highly resonant in this manner is “Ebbing,” which soars constantly upward in its repetitions. If the spiritual seems an unlikely characteristic to associate with one of the more caustic outfits to have emerged from the ’80s underground, it should be reemphasized that Gira long ago moved on from the bruising misanthropy of Swans’ early days.
And yet, a lingering dark edge (or perhaps better said, an uneasy tension) does accompany much of the recent material, and likewise here, especially throughout the multifaceted 44-minute piece “The Beggar Lover (Three),” across which Frost’s presence is deeply felt. Due to its length, this is essentially the album’s standout track by default (it’s included with the vinyl on the download card), though “Paradise is Mine” and “Ebbing” aren’t far behind.
That Scott Walker crossed my mind more than once as this set played was a welcome twist, and ditto a similarity to Suicide in “The Memorious,” which closes disc two of the CD. But the bottom line is that Gira has been exceeding expectations for so long it’s basically become the norm, and in this regard The Beggar holds strong.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
