Hi everyone, Neatthony Feettano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. And it's time for a review of this new Swans album, Birthing.

Here we have the 17th studio LP from legendary pioneering experimental rock outfit Swans, a band with super deep ties in the avant-garde no wave New York scene. And they are dropping this record two years after their last, The Beggar, in 2023, which while not a favorite in their catalog, for me, personally, was one of the most consequential records they've dropped in this current era of their career, you could say, at least from a conceptual standpoint, due to its themes centered around death, which for Swans is nothing new generally as a topic. I mean, there are numerous points in the band's catalog where death has been the topic at hand, especially in a meta sense, as they have literally dropped projects that are in reference to the state of the band.

But with The Beggar it all felt a lot more specific and personal. With main brain of the band Michael Gira, who is in his 70s at this point, reflecting on his own life, his memories, his past with some of his best and most telling lyrics to date, the whole record seemed like another significant moment of finality for the band, at points calling back to other such instances in the band's catalog, like the classic Soundtracks for the Blind.

And as enjoyable as the album was, I was kind of left thinking where could Swans possibly go from here? And that is where Birthing comes in. In a way, it's kind of fitting that a record that is so infatuated with passing away be followed by a record that is instead infatuated with birthing or even new beginnings, you could say a rebirth possibly, which I think is most likely the purpose this record is intending to serve, as it did come along with a bit of a warning, or rather a notice, that this LP will potentially mark the end of the current big sound era for Swans, meaning pretty much everything the band has dropped from The Seer up to today. Records with these dense, winding, panoramic, noisy, intense, immersive, improvisational and transcendental pieces of music that have all proven to be highly influential to left field rock artists over the past decade.

And according to Gira, whatever iteration Swans takes past this point is going to be comparatively a lot more scaled back in some fashion. And also there may even be inklings of this direction on this record, which, honestly, on the surface runs like a pretty standard Swans fare at this point. You have seven tracks, all of which run between seven and 22 minutes in length, and all total up to a two hour runtime, the bulk of the material here being fine tuned in the live setting with a lot of collective improvisation and the process of honing.

These tracks can be heard in part in recent live recordings like on 2024's Live Rope album, where you can catch alternate versions of tracks from this record now. Many of these songs are these massive multi phased experiences, with Gira's bellowing and explorative vocals kind of calling out above these very thick or sometimes spacey and atmospheric beds of instrumentation that could be pretty otherworldly in their best moments.

Now at this point, Swans have dropped multiple albums and hours of music devoted to this trademark recipe and are now continuing to do it after a record that already had a very strong sense of finality to it. So when I went into Birthing, I was kind of asking some questions like what is this adding to the canon of the band at this point and what is this record conceptually really saying now?

I will say off the bat, if there is a more skeletal and streamlined version of the band hidden within the track list of this record somewhere, I'm not really hearing it. For the most part, this LP sounds like yet another hulking, massive, overpowering juggernaut of a project to me, something I hope I would recognize, given that this same sort of musical makeup is the one the band used to make some of my favorite music of the 2000s and 2010s – really of all time. And I will say that Birthing does feel kind of connected to or like an extension of some of the ideas from The Beggar tracks that had maybe more of a positive and heavenly aura than you would expect for Swans.

Take the closing track "Rope Away", for example, the bulk of which is dedicated to these gorgeous, shimmering layers of guitar. Guitars and strings that are plucked, are strummed, are just kind of fluttering and droning with lyrics that tell of friends who have passed away and a great beyond of some sort. This track is handily the most beautiful and also immersive moment on the entire LP, and the whole first half of the thing makes me feel like I'm just kind of gradually floating away as I'm listening to it.

There's also the title track of the record, much of which sounds like a hope-laced, blissful third wave post rock piece, like something a band such as Mono or Explosions in the Sky would forge; mind you, after a point in time where Swans had kind of already made their mark on the post rock genre. But yeah, there's a pretty beautiful crescendo on this track as well, with a lot of meandering, vaguely positive guitar leads swimming through the wall of droning instrumentation.

There's also the final leg of "I Am A Tower", which is this kind of righteous linear rock passage that's very David Bowie-esque. So yeah, there are definitely some spots of this record that are uncharacteristically bright for Swans, and I suppose it makes sense, given some of the context, for these tracks – to go back to the title track, which very much reads like a reflection on the experience of being birthed, being in the womb, really.

There's also a kind of strange "pay attention motherfuckers" refrain toward the very end of the track I want to make note of before it launches into this final ascent of driving linear rock instrumentation that is quite sinister in tone, makes me feel like I'm being chased down by a masked murderer. And to go back also to "I Am A Tower", though the intentions of this song are a bit difficult to interpret. I mean, I have read from the official Swans's Instagram account that the inspiration has something to do with a vision of like a threeway involving Donald Trump, which I don't want to get too much into the psychoanalysis of, honestly, but much of the song lyrically reads kind of like a seething authoritarian screed, with a lone being assured in his ability to adequately control and fix the world. The whole thing feels like an ecstatic and thrilling power fantasy that most likely would not bear out positively in the way that the song is framed in real life.

And while I was definitely enamored with the track at first, with more listens, I found the ending kind of oddly inconspicuous. A bit of a fizzle out moment, and the crescendo that is built up to in the first half I feel like is just kind of okay by modern Swans standards. I'm kind of skeptical of how much a persistently chirping gym whistle during some of the song's loudest moments really brings to the track. I mean, the band has surely made more enthralling cacophonies in the past, even with what sounds like a random dog cameo appearing at 1:52.

So yeah, while there are some songs on this record that sort of feel like a great variation from what you would expect from the band, there are other cuts that feel pretty typical for Swans's current era of music.

There's "Red Yellow", which is the briefest track on the entire LP. It's eerie, strangely evil in tone, digs deeper into some of the birthing and pregnancy themes of the record too, with a focus on lust as a point, point of disgust as well.

And then there's "Guardian Spirit", which to me feels like musically it could fit in with any number of tracks from To Be Kind or even the following Glowing Man, which I don't say to highlight its redundancy, because I do genuinely think this track creatively, and as far as the intensity goes, too, could go toe to toe with some of the better moments on those records, proving this is still a sound and a style that I think has some gas left in the tank and that Swans can still really pack a punch with when it's done well. It really is assuring hearing a track like this on the album being as entertaining as it is, given how some of the other tracks that I think fall sort of short of the same thrills and excitement.

I thought I was becoming jaded or something, listening to a few of the songs on this album, like the opener, "The Healers", for example, which, to be fair, I think does have some of the most intriguing lyrics on the entire record, which definitely set the whole concept of the album up. As you have the point of view of this caring, motherly figure, which goes beyond the standard, hey, I love my daughter and I'm going to raise her right sort of mindset with lyrics like, "I will break bones to feed our daughter / In buried dreams I sift the powder inside your throat / I hide her thunder / I killed the daughter in my own mother." Really addressing that primal urge to kill, to protect and survive. And also this idea of, like, general shift and replacement when you grow old enough to have your own family.

Now with all that, I will say this song doesn't really feature one of Michael's most gripping vocal performances, as through the first leg of the track, things do maybe feel a bit too directionless. And when a strong rock groove does eventually kick in, it feels just a bit too tacked on. But yeah, if we're talking about birth, a track like this, to my ears, feels like a bit of afterbirth from this era of Swans creatively.

And then there's "The Merge", which in some aspects, I think is one of the most novel mind-fucks on the entire LP. But by that same token, it does also feel like the band kind of throwing anything they can at the wall to see what sticks, as they sort of reiterate these linear beats and three-note progressions and top them with saxophone freakouts, disorienting electronics, counting idle whistling. It's a lot of disparate parts and ideas being kind of thrown in there, but I don't really think it's all connecting and reinforcing each other all that well. It all somehow feels more disjointed than even some of the more collage-based pieces the band has come together with in the past.

But yeah, with this Swans album, overall, I felt like it was okay. I guess – keep in mind with this being one of my favorite bands of the modern era, that opinion and perception is on a bit of a curve. I feel like an okay or a decent album from Swans is still better, much better and more entertaining and interesting than most of the music I'm hearing out there today, on average.

But with that being said, an okay album from Swans is still asking for two hours of attention from you. And like the recently released Leaving Meaning, I'm kind of walking away from this record feeling like it doesn't really add that much to the Swans narrative and sonic canon. At least nothing that The Beggar didn't already. And I feel like conceptually as well as musically in a lot of respects, comparing that to this album, it was a lot more ambitious of a feat for the band to complete, whereas Birthing maybe feels like more of a transitional moment.

So all I can really say is I hope this record ushers in a very interesting change of pace, the change of pace that has been promised, that may potentially see the band in a more stripped back and nuanced, subtler state, because that certainly could take things in an interesting direction, which is why I'm feeling a strong 6 to a light 7 on this LP.

Anthony Fantano, Swans, Forever.