The experimental brainchild of Michael Gira, SWANS enters their forty-first year with a new double album, The Beggar. It is an expansive, confounding, migraine-inducing, sometimes rewarding, challenging album from the band as Gira grapples with mortality and existence itself on downtempo, creeping tracks that repeat and drone in various directions.
Gira was bursting at the seams during the pandemic and managed to finally record and mix the album at Candy Bomber Studio in Berlin Germany when restrictions were lifted. Joining Gira for this outing are associates from his other project Angels of Light (Kristof Hahn – Lap steel, various guitars, vocals, Larry Mullins – Drums, vibes, orchestral percussion, Mellotron, various keyboards, backing vocals, Dana Schechter – Bass guitar, lap steel, keyboards, vocals, piano, Phil Puleo – Drums, percussion, vocals, piano, exotic wind instruments) as well as Christopher Pravdica – Bass guitar, sounds, keyboards, vocals and Ben Frost – Guitar, synthesizers, sound manipulations.
The group never gets revved up on this release, things are slow as SWANS seem to be expanding on 2019’s spacey, reset record leaving meaning. Dark pastures are explored with the majority of the songs beginning sparsely, crawling along while repeating themes, slowly building layers of sonic texture before crescendos, all around Gira’s plain-spoken singing.
Opening with the aptly named “The Parasite”, swirling sounds enter the frame with acoustic instruments setting the scene before going over the top in theatrical fashion as Gira sings “Come to me/Feed on me”. Disease, death, and destruction all linger throughout the songs. “Paradise is Mine” is up next with its repetitive marching clang that borders on nauseating while “Los: Angeles: City of Death” is the briefest outing as well as the punchiest with rising tension and backing vocals driving the effort forward.
“Michael is Done” has some self-centered singing/talking to begin/end but manages to become simultaneously soaring and grinding for an engaging middle section while “Unforming” is much less exciting, dour folk music that does nothing but meanders aimlessly. A death march pushes the drums to the front on both the title track and the cyclical, squiggling “Why Can’t I Have What I Want Any Time That I Want?” while church chimes flourish after a soft and bright acoustic start on “No More Of This?”
The best effort on the first album “Ebbing” twinkles before shifting into sea shanty mode, then vibrates and slowly rises to outer space with backing vocals galore. However, even this goes on too long and when the first disk wraps up, nothing is truly memorable; then the forty-four minute “The Begger Lover (Three)” arrives.
This effort is the full album in one (granted, very long) track as vibrating frequencies connect various sections as the band is in the flow of something greater than their parts. Synths, wah-wah, percussion, female spoken word poetry, static blips, heavy drums, and pulsing hovering nightmarish lullabies, all float in. The band slips into a drone and goes on and on, screeching at times, allowing babies to deliver nursery rhymes at others, it is all the same. Then a trance groove is organically developed and jazzy drums lead the swirling spacey playing as it wraps with the best musical passages on the album; even at forty-five minutes, it feels like it could keep going into eternity.
The Beggar is a challenging listen over its two-hour run time, but the sonic soundscapes SWANS create throughout deliver what the band set out to do; juxtapose the beautiful and grotesque while stretching out their droning sound to the breaking point.
