On Friday, the experimental rock band Swans released “Birthing,” a 115-minute post-rock album that is as immersive as it is challenging. Michael Gira, the band’s frontman and only consistent member since its inception, stated on Young God Records’ website that this album will be his last time venturing into the production of “the all-consuming sound worlds” that have been his “obsession for years.” Instead, the music he produces for the rest of his career will be “in a significantly pared down form.”
Since their formation in 1981, Swans has released 17 studio albums and eight extended plays. Led by Gira, the music of Swans has spanned genres such as harsh no-wave, gothic rock, psychedelic folk, sound collage, and droning post-rock. While their music has encompassed many fields, every release shares the same uncompromising weight and brutality demonstrated through slowly building tracks with beautiful payoffs — sometimes songs are upwards of 20, 30, or even 40 minutes. Their music is often heavy and sometimes terrifying, but also beautiful. This aspect led to the band’s name, as swans are beautiful but violent creatures.
Released in 1983, “Filth” — the band’s first full-length release — is a monstrously abrasive no-wave rock project that set the dark tone for the band. Their 1984 follow-up, “Cop,” took this to an even further extreme. The cover reads: “This record is designed to be played at maximum volume,” showcasing how heavy the music is. Kurt Cobain of Nirvana cited “Young God,” the accompanying EP of “Cop,” as an influence for his music. The band began to take a softer approach for their next few albums, eventually releasing their widely acclaimed album “White Light from the Mouth of Infinity” in 1991, and later “The Great Annihilator” in 1995. Their final studio project before a 10-year hiatus, “Soundtracks for the Blind,” is a 141-minute exploration of dark and terrifying soundscapes composed of field recordings, live music, and several art rock epics, such as “Helpless Child” and “The Sound.”
Following this hiatus, they proceeded to release several critically acclaimed albums, including “The Seer” in 2012, “To Be Kind” in 2014, and “The Glowing Man” in 2016, all two-hour journeys that demonstrate the band at their most focused, heavy, and diverse in their sound. In particular, “To Be Kind” doesn’t waste a second of its runtime and is a fulfilling listen throughout, boasting some of the greatest musical climaxes in post-rock. In 2019, the band released “The Beggar,” their most recent album up until “Birthing.” It includes the longest Swans studio track to date, “The Beggar Lover (Three),” which is nearly 44 minutes long.
“Birthing” is, in many ways, a culmination of Swans’ work over the past several decades. The album, like its predecessors of the 2010s, is hypnotically repetitive to the point where it is mind-numbing. The opening track, “The Healers,” sets this tone in place with its haunting bassline and Gira’s deep and mysterious vocals. These elements culminate in several eruptions of sound from all instruments throughout the song, which is 21 minutes long, ending with a repetitive and ever-changing snare rhythm that sounds almost psychotic. This heavy and beautiful atmosphere continues in the album’s lead single, “I Am a Tower,” which is as beautiful and uplifting as it is haunting.
The album’s themes — as is often the case with Swans’ work — are somewhat ambiguous. Overall, the album focuses on subjects surrounding nature and the relationship between a mother and children. In “I Am a Tower,” Gira envisions himself as an omnipotent being, which he refers to as a tower. As a tower, he is connected to and one with the Earth.
“I am the power of mind, and if I think it it’s mine / I am a kingdom of one, behold what I have become,” Gira triumphantly proclaims, illustrating this transformation.
In addition, in typical Swans fashion, the album deals with ideas surrounding motherhood and childhood. The title track, “Birthing,” paints this picture with the lines “I can hear them, voices calling / Children singing, laughing, screaming without meaning.” Samples of a child’s speech can also be heard throughout the album, like in “The Merge,” where a small child says “I love you mommy,” before the song immediately dissolves into a chaotic electronic wall of sound, almost as if those words caused the song to decompose.
What this album accomplishes is something rarely seen in the band’s discography. While it is an all-encompassing and sometimes overwhelming experience, it is not as relentlessly dark and intimidating as the band’s other works. For every intense build, there is a calming release. The cacophonous peaks are terrifying, while the glimmering guitars and pianos are beautiful. The title track is a case-in-point example of this, containing the peaks and valleys of the album’s ferocity. The closing track, “(Rope) Away,” is another entrancing, bright, and beautiful piece of music that builds upon itself like no other through shimmering guitars, providing a worthy end to this era of Swans.
“Birthing” is a fulfilling musical experience throughout. While it lacks memorable and addicting tunes that one could find in albums like “To Be Kind,” “Birthing” is valuable for the picture that it paints. This isn’t an album to skip through for individual tracks, but an album to press play and lose yourself completely.
