SWANS - Birthing

Two years ago, “The Beggar“, particularly in the tracks “No More Of This” and “Michael Is Done”, seemed to foreshadow the farewell of Swans after a glorious career spanning more than forty years. Luckily Michael Gira's creativity still has a few cards left to play, and the title of his new work sounds like a rebirth, the will to live overcoming the trauma that such an event entails. The heart of “The Beggar” turns into a black hole (which, on closer inspection, isn't entirely black), a sign of death, but also of a new possible existence.

“Birthing”, the seventeenth studio album by the storied New York band, is as usual a mammoth work. An hour and fifty-five minutes split across just seven tracks, five of which run between fifteen and twenty-two minutes: pretty much what you'd expect from Swans. “Birthing” is in a way a synthesis of what Swans have done over the last thirty years, a summa of many of Gira's intuitions, from shamanic chanting to poetic lyrics, from obsessive repetitions to hammering rhythms, alternating with endless moments of stasis, with what Gira has called - in recent interviews - big sound, which we had translated as the so-called monster tracks.

“Birthing” therefore sounds like a return to “The Seer”, as is clearly evident from the title track, which - for at least the first ten minutes - seems ripped straight from that unforgettable record, while in the second half it recalls a less harrowing version of the classic repeated double chord of “Bring The Sun” or of “The Glowing Man“, before relaunching itself with an almost psychedelic dreamlike chant that closes with a hammering finale. Nothing that Swans haven't already done, but it's all perfect as it is and couldn't have been any other way.

The true big sound track is “The Healers”, tested repeatedly during recent solo live shows, which shows Gira's usual hypnotic, shamanic ability. Just two acoustic guitar notes, a backdrop of lap steel guitar, a female choir and the frontman's powerful voice rising like a monolith for the first seven minutes, before every instrument comes in chasing yet another monster track with a delirious finale (once again lifted from “The Seer”) that live will be pure noise ecstasy.

There are also a few echoes drifting in from the Nineties in "The Merge", with a frenzied electronic backdrop that seems to emerge from the most experimental tracks of that masterpiece that was "Soundtrack For The Blind" (1997). The power that at times went (magnificently, in my view) out of control on the most intense albums of the monster trilogy is instead always kept in balance here with the moments of (albeit restless) stasis of "(Rope) Away", a shortened version of the track "Rope" (a breathtaking thirty-one minutes) that opened every show on the 2024 tour (available on the "Live Rope" CD from the same year). This version, a mere (so to speak) nineteen minutes long, is absolute ecstasy, a true rebirth of sounds both post-rock and dreamlike-psychedelic, typical of Christoph Hahn's and Norman Westberg's guitars.

Gira manages to surprise us further with the first single "I Am A Tower" which - after the long preparatory intro - from the thirteenth minute onward continues in typical new wave style, recalling the David Bowie of the Berlin trilogy, particularly "Heroes", with the guitar clearly paying homage to Robert Fripp. Swans become tuneful and even danceable, if only for a few minutes. If this isn't a rebirth...

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11/06/2025