Swans, Koko 28th October 2010
It started without any fanfare. The band members had been wandering on and off finishing setting up the stage. Michael was in his usual good spirits, blowing a hooter at the audience and giving a cheery smile and wave. He was in good humour throughout the show too, joking at one point about how nice it was to see so many lovely young ladies in the audience, although I was surprised the audience wasn't even more male dominated, and had actually spotted several ladies, some of whom were young and lovely by anyone's standards.
The stage had been empty for a while when Christoph Hahn stalked on, set up a droning loop on his guitars (at least I think they were guitars, but he was playing them laid flat) and walked off again. This went on for a few minutes and then Thor Harris came on and started banging on some high pitched bells. I realised at this point that they were starting with "No Words, No Thoughts". The guitars come in at about 40 seconds on the album, but this went on for at least five minutes, before the other band members joined him (plus a small brass section) and the stage suddenly erupted into sound.
I think it was around this point that I first noticed people leaving the front and not coming back. I've said before that some gigs make you feel like there are two types of people in the world, people who were there and experienced what you did, and everybody else. It seems last night's Swans show introduces a third type, those who were there but still didn't experience what you did. I wore earplugs last night. I usually do anyway, but Swans used to be notorious for the sheer volume of their shows, all sorts of rumours abound about people involuntarily throwing up from the volume, although Michael Gira has always claimed they were never particularly loud. Anyway, earplugs are possibly key to my experience of last night's show, as I saw several people sticking their fingers in their ears and many more people left the front, so much so that by the end of the show I was considerably closer to the front than at the start.
"My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky" is actually a record of fantastic light and shade, delicate gentle melodies like the first, incredibly pretty, half of "You Fucking People Make Me Sick", and intense, powerful sections like er, the second half of "You Fucking People Make Me Sick", but last night was all power and noise, the volume unrelenting. Sometimes it got even louder and then I could feel each pulse in my chest and my throat. It physically pushed me and yet seemed to hold me in its embrace at the same time. I loved it, but I can understand why it wouldn't be to everyone's liking.
Gira has stated in interviews that he regretted chickening out of making the intro to "No Words No Thoughts" go on for the ten minutes he'd originally envisaged, but last night we got the director's cut. This was to set the tone for the evening, each song had so much more to it than on the album, and the older songs got new leases of life. "Your Property" was much closer to the 1984 original than any of the Jarboe-sung reworkings but sounded fresh and new. "Sex, God, Sex" was just that, religious ecstasy and lust combined, which description could actually stand for the whole set. And "I Crawled"...
I wasn't sure if I was going to miss Jarboe or not. I saw her live in 2005, long before I knew Swans would ever be back, and felt sure then that I'd got as close as I ever would to hearing Swans, since the Michael Gira shows around the same time were mostly one man acoustic shows. "I Crawled" first appears on on early pre-Jarboe EP as a sparse, slow, pounding five minute track with Gira on vocals but by the time of "Swans are Dead" has evolved into one of the scariest songs I've ever heard, starting slow and insinuating and building up to a roaring climax that I didn't think they could possibly match. But they did. It was somewhere between the two, with Jarboe's roar replaced by the noise of the instruments. Amazing.
The next few songs blurred into each other a bit for me, all having been extensively reworked. I recognised "My Birth" and "Eden Prison", which actually struck me as being less noisy than on the album, but I somehow failed to spot "Beautiful Child" in between.
It seemed like hardly any time had passed at all when they closed on "Eden Prison", leaving the stage for about five minutes before returning for a very short, very sharp "Little Mouth" and then it was all over. It had actually been an hour and forty five minutes.
I never thought I'd see Swans, and I bitterly regretted for a long time that I didn't get into them sooner. Now I'm regretting not taking this week off and seeing every show on the tour. I hope there'll be more.
The stage had been empty for a while when Christoph Hahn stalked on, set up a droning loop on his guitars (at least I think they were guitars, but he was playing them laid flat) and walked off again. This went on for a few minutes and then Thor Harris came on and started banging on some high pitched bells. I realised at this point that they were starting with "No Words, No Thoughts". The guitars come in at about 40 seconds on the album, but this went on for at least five minutes, before the other band members joined him (plus a small brass section) and the stage suddenly erupted into sound.
I think it was around this point that I first noticed people leaving the front and not coming back. I've said before that some gigs make you feel like there are two types of people in the world, people who were there and experienced what you did, and everybody else. It seems last night's Swans show introduces a third type, those who were there but still didn't experience what you did. I wore earplugs last night. I usually do anyway, but Swans used to be notorious for the sheer volume of their shows, all sorts of rumours abound about people involuntarily throwing up from the volume, although Michael Gira has always claimed they were never particularly loud. Anyway, earplugs are possibly key to my experience of last night's show, as I saw several people sticking their fingers in their ears and many more people left the front, so much so that by the end of the show I was considerably closer to the front than at the start.
"My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky" is actually a record of fantastic light and shade, delicate gentle melodies like the first, incredibly pretty, half of "You Fucking People Make Me Sick", and intense, powerful sections like er, the second half of "You Fucking People Make Me Sick", but last night was all power and noise, the volume unrelenting. Sometimes it got even louder and then I could feel each pulse in my chest and my throat. It physically pushed me and yet seemed to hold me in its embrace at the same time. I loved it, but I can understand why it wouldn't be to everyone's liking.
Gira has stated in interviews that he regretted chickening out of making the intro to "No Words No Thoughts" go on for the ten minutes he'd originally envisaged, but last night we got the director's cut. This was to set the tone for the evening, each song had so much more to it than on the album, and the older songs got new leases of life. "Your Property" was much closer to the 1984 original than any of the Jarboe-sung reworkings but sounded fresh and new. "Sex, God, Sex" was just that, religious ecstasy and lust combined, which description could actually stand for the whole set. And "I Crawled"...
I wasn't sure if I was going to miss Jarboe or not. I saw her live in 2005, long before I knew Swans would ever be back, and felt sure then that I'd got as close as I ever would to hearing Swans, since the Michael Gira shows around the same time were mostly one man acoustic shows. "I Crawled" first appears on on early pre-Jarboe EP as a sparse, slow, pounding five minute track with Gira on vocals but by the time of "Swans are Dead" has evolved into one of the scariest songs I've ever heard, starting slow and insinuating and building up to a roaring climax that I didn't think they could possibly match. But they did. It was somewhere between the two, with Jarboe's roar replaced by the noise of the instruments. Amazing.
The next few songs blurred into each other a bit for me, all having been extensively reworked. I recognised "My Birth" and "Eden Prison", which actually struck me as being less noisy than on the album, but I somehow failed to spot "Beautiful Child" in between.
It seemed like hardly any time had passed at all when they closed on "Eden Prison", leaving the stage for about five minutes before returning for a very short, very sharp "Little Mouth" and then it was all over. It had actually been an hour and forty five minutes.
I never thought I'd see Swans, and I bitterly regretted for a long time that I didn't get into them sooner. Now I'm regretting not taking this week off and seeing every show on the tour. I hope there'll be more.