Swans Return w/New Album, Tour

Due this fall and accompanied by a tour.

By Blurt Staff

Michael Gira's re-activated Swans will be undertaking their first U.S. performances in 13 years, celebrating the fall release of the first new Swans album since Soundtracks For The Blind (1997). The album was recorded by Jason LeFarge at Seizure's Palace in Brooklyn and is currently being remixed by Gira with Bryce Goggin (Antony & The Johnsons, Akron/Family) at Trout Recordings. The album, title tba, will be released on Gira's Young God label.

The band's tour dates are listed below.

Here's what Gira wrote on the label website about his decision to bring the group back:

"About reconstituting Swans: ...there was a point a few years ago during a particular show when I was on tour with Angels  Of Light, with Akron/Family serving as the backing band. It was during the song ‘The Provider.' Seth's guitar was sustaining one open chord (very loudly), rising to a peak, then crashing down again in a rhythm that could have been the equivalent of a deep and soulful act of copulation. The whole band swayed with this arc. Really was like riding waves of sound.  I thought right then, ‘You know, Michael, Swans wasn't so bad after all...'

"Ha ha!  It brought back - in a flood - memories, or maybe not memories, more a tangible re-emersion in the sensation of Swans music rushing through my body in waves, lifting me up towards what, I can only assume, will be my only experience of heaven. It's difficult - and probably pointless - to try to describe this experience. It's ecstatic, I suppose - a force of simultaneous self negation and rebirth. Really, I probably only experienced this a handful of times to such an extreme extent during the entire 15 year history of Swans. All the elements have to align perfectly, and you can't force it, though you might constantly strive for it. I don't mean to be too lofty here, but it's a fact. I'm talking about my own experience of the music (though I'd hope people in the audiences along the way might have experienced a similar episode). When I ask myself if I believe in God, I start to say NO, but then I remember that sensation, and I'm not so sure. So I want more of that, before my body breaks down to such an extent that it won't be possible any more. So I'm doing it.

"Naturally, some of the material for this new record will be songs, centered around the voice and words. Other parts (I'm hoping) will be reaching for what I've described above. One thing I want to point out right now: THIS IS NOT A REUNION. It's not some dumb-ass nostalgia act. It is not repeating the past. After 5 Angels Of Light albums, I needed a way to move FORWARD, in a new direction, and it just so happens that revivifying the idea of Swans is allowing me to do that. I'll be using what I learned in the last several years to inform the way this new material develops, while carrying forward from where Swans left off with its final album Soundtracks For The Blind, and in particular, Swans Are Dead. If you have expectations about how Swans should be, that's your business, but it would be a disservice to both of us if I were to make music with your needs in mind, and the music would certainly suffer as a result. In any event, I certainly never thought this day would arrive, but it's inevitable, it's here, it's fate, so I'm succumbing to it."

Swans U.S. tour dates:

Sept 28 Philadelphia,  PA @  Trocodero Theater

Sept 29 Washington, DC @ Black Cat

Sept 30 Boston, MA @ Middle East downstairs

Oct  01 Montreal, QC @  Le National  - Pop Montreal fest

Oct 02 Toronto, ON @ Lee's  Palace

Oct 04 Detroit, MI @ Crofoot Ballroom

Oct 05 Chicago, IL at Bottom Lounge

Oct 08 Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Masonic Temple.

Oct 09 New York, NY @  Bowery  Ballroom