WANTED
Rumours of the death of Swans have been exaggerated.
I can vouch for this having experienced their ear-bruising concert at Bologna’s Locomotiv club.
The volume alone is loud enough to waken corpses and should lay to rest any notion that Michael Gira has reconvened the band as a cosy nostalgia act. These six guys may no longer be in the full flush of youth but they put any snot-nosed noise bands to shame.
Gira, at the tender age of 56 , has the look of someone rejuvenated, a fact already placed on record by the September release of the stunning new Swans album My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky.
He is clearly not kidding when he says that in performance he seeks to achieve a state of “simultaneous self negation and rebirth”.
The show begins with a ten minute drone (on a vacant stage) as if to train the audience’s ears for the barrage of noise they are about the endure. The band come on one by one to add layers (and volume) in what gradually unfolds into No Words/No Thoughts. (Unfortunately, someone forgot to turn the mic up so the ‘no words’ of the title becomes literally true).
Gira does find his voice for older Swan songs – Sex, God ,Sex and I Crawled. In the former he pleads for Jesus to come down and in the latter he outdoes Jim Morrison’s End game patricide fantasies by instructing his father to “put your hands on my throat – now choke me – we’ll die”. This puts the “we are free” line from Eden Prison into a more ambiguous perspective.
There is an unmistakable cathartic energy at work by Gira and his band mates.
Front stage, Christoph Hahn plays a contraption that looks like an innocent pedal steel transformed into noise machine. He stares out meanly at the audience (but also flirtatiously at the females). Mid way through the concert he seems to be hyperventilating and seized by hot flushes – he towels himself down but looks briefly as if he’s about to pass out. Thankfully, the moment passes but it did make me wonder how many wild years these guys have left in them.
In contrast. the caveman-like figure of the appropriately named Thor (Harris) looks indestructible. Sporting a mane of lank golden locks, he is stripped to the waist throughout to show his muscles and abundant front /back body hair. He attacks tubular bells with mallets and hits out at a land of the giants scale gong.
The other noise makers are Norman Westberg (guitar) , Phil Puleo (drums) and Chris Pravdica (bass)
There are precious few moments when the savagery abates sufficiently to catch your breath (or rest your ears) and ultimately the show becomes an endurance test. In this respect I found it lacked the raw power of their recent album where they prove that they can make a strong impact without needing to pummel the listener into submission.
Looking around at the end, the audience , which included a higher than average number of pot-heads – looked more stunned than ecstatic and this, from a band who are the antithesis of easy listening, may well be just the effect Gira and crew wanted.
Swans Concert Setlist at Locomotiv Club, Bologna on December 4, 2010 | setlist.fm.
