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Album of the year so far for sure. I never thought I'd describe a Swans album as "fun," but this one totally is. The grooves of songs like "Screen Shot" and "A Little God in My Hands" are just infectious. My favorite track on "The Seer" was "The Seer Returns," and I'm super glad they're exploring further in that direction. I was lucky enough to see them during the tour leading up to the release of "The Seer," and I hope I can do it again the next time around; I would love to see how huge this stuff can get in a live setting.
The Ass Stooge fucked around with this message at 22:09 on May 6, 2014 |
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May 6, 2014 22:06
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 23:04 |
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nomapple posted:Definitely take earplugs. Counterpoint: do not take earplugs and stand as close to the speakers as possible.
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May 8, 2014 18:52
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Rageaholic Monkey posted:Uhhh so I'm listening to To Be Kind having never heard anything by Swans before because I've been hearing it's been getting great reviews, and holy loving god, Bring the Sun is such a big song. Like, Godspeed You Black Emperor big but even bigger than that. Just completely massive and nigh-overwhelming It wasn't until mid-'90s that Swans really started indulging in the kind of widescreen post-rock that GYBE seems to have perfected (check out stuff like "The Sound" from Soundtracks for the Blind and "Feel Happiness" from Swans Are Dead), but yeah, the influence is undeniable. Swans' sound has changed an incredible amount over the years. One can think of their career as being (roughly) divided into three phases: early, minimal, cruel-as-gently caress no-wave (Filth [1983], Cop [1984], Greed [1986], Holy Money [1986]), more conventionally melodious gothic-rock (Children of God [1987], The Burning World [1989], White Light from the Mouth of Infinity [1991], Love of Life [1992], and The Great Annihilator [1995]), and heavy, maximalist blues-rock (My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky [2010], The Seer [2012], and To Be Kind [2013]). 1996's "Soundtracks for the Blind" is kind of an anomaly here; it's comprised largely of a whole bunch of disparate demos, outtakes, and experiments that Michael Gira had laying around and decided to sequence into a proper album. If you're looking for more stuff in the vein of To Be Kind, your best bet is to start with the rest of the stuff they've released since reforming in 2010: the studio albums "My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky" and "The Seer," and the live albums "We Rose from Your Bed with the Sun in Our Head" and "Not Here/Not Now." If you want more Godspeed-esque post-rock stuff, grab "Soundtracks for the Blind" and "Swans Are Dead." You would probably also find working your way back through their aforementioned late-'80s/early-'90s gothic rock stuff pretty rewarding; none of the songs on those records are quite as expansive as Godspeed or modern Swans, but there's still a lot of gorgeous arrangements going on there. Frankly, I would recommend listening to every Swans album and deciding for yourself what you like. You might surprise yourself. I know this isn't a very helpful answer with a discography as expansive as theirs, but everything they've released has something to offer. Even "The Burning World," by far their worst album, isn't really bad music so much as a failure to capture the elements that make Swans such a unique group.
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May 20, 2014 23:18
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But I also kind of love it. It's scary and mysterious and new and exciting.
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too many monkeys on this page
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May 20, 2014 23:53
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sharktamer posted:On my way home from seeing swans in brixton. Rad as gently caress and so intense. When I saw them in Oklahoma City in 2012, there was this dude who looked to be in his 40s but dressed like a teenager who kept bobbing around the crowd and bumping into people trying to get them to slamdance. Eventually Gira addressed him from the stage and made him promise to cut it out or he would be ejected.
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May 28, 2014 00:31
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 23:04 |
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It has come to my attention that Swans will be playing a free show at something called NXNE in Toronto on June 20th.
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Jun 13, 2014 19:07
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