Swans- The Glowing Man (2016)

Swans- The Glowing Man (2016)

By: Ghost Writer

To me, the Swans music is something else, is not simple music, its Michael Gira's naked confessions on sex, religion and pain, lots of pain, in a way Gira sounds like one of those old bluesmen, tormented and menacing, with people accusing them of having made a deal with the devil, well, I don't know if Gira has made a lot pact with the devil, or if he is the devil himself, making brilliant recordings as if he was possessed with endless talent, filling me with more questions than answers and putting me in a position where is hard to know if this is simply music or Gira's brutal confession of a sinful life, with a perfect sonic companion to match it.

Now what we have here in front of us is not the legendary maverick band of the mid 80s that along Sonic Youth, changed the conceptions of noise within pop music, after reforming the band a couple of years ago, Gira got an even freer vision that started to conceive music without limits, equally disruptive as the lyrics coming from Gira's mind, this new version of the Swans, that according to Gira, end with this recording, called The Glowing Man has surpassed all my expectations, delivering amazing records in a more prolific way than in the past, less dense, but more penetrating and volatile and more ambitious in its nature.

The Glowing Man, the Swans latest record is an amazing piece of art, is almost like been able to witness the birth of the universe, a chaotic, cosmic ballet taking place in front of us, with each Gira's compositions taking us into really complex scenarios where terror, hope, shame, drama and salvation all come together, from opener Cloud of Forgetting with its elegant waltz like beginning, mutating into a tortured swirling blues, the beautiful Gothic dissonance of Cloud of the Unknowing, with its violent descent into dark folk, following this with a beautiful song called The World Looks Red The World Looks Black, a song someone like the late Jim Morrison would undoubtedly love to sing, here Gira sounds like dancing under the desert moon, it's what people like Gram Parsons called American Cosmic Music, with Gira letting himself go as his body dissolves in the night.

When Will I Return? Is surely a beautiful song with Michael's wife Jennifer on vocals, but for me, the main piece of this great work of art is the title track, 28 minutes of pure spectacular music, beginning with an electric storm forming in the middle of the desert night, with American Indian tambourine as a companion and Sonic Youth like mantra guitars, Gira role as singer here is a powerful one, he greatly commands this final attack, pure krautrock fury freed moving at a vertiginous speed, like an unstoppable force coming at you, I remember as a young man doing a song that way, like a snowball running free downhill, getting bigger and bigger and becoming back monster impossible to stop, and that is precisely what The Glowing Man, this version of the Swans "swan song", Gira says goodbye as a winner on top of the hill, as the man who created a monster and rode on top of it in a triumphant way, this is one of the best record of the year.