Some of the finest music ever made is paradoxical in nature – a combination of beauty and noise – think of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ Your Funeral, My Trial or Sonic Youth’s EVOL. So it is with Swans, and their vast back catalogue. They have emerged from the rubble and destruction of their pulverising early noise music, into a more measured, thoughtful but no less challenging band, full of lyrics about sickness, healing, redemption and desire, which have drawn comparisons to Cormac McCarthy.
The Beggar then, should throw up no surprises, with its sprawling, epic songs like the droning, brassy, epic The Beggar Lover (Three) clocking in at over forty three minutes. Yet, there are a few startling moments. Michael Is Done – with Michael Gira singing a staccato mantra, seems personal, given it’s written in the third person – but may not be. There is always a sense of remove to Gira, an elliptical sense of things needing to be unpacked. The lap steel guitar (played by Kristof Hahn and Dana Schechter) on almost hymnal No More Of This feels like a soundtrack piece, which feels somehow unexpected within the context of the rest of the album.
As ever, songs build into dissonance as well as divine melody, then just dissolve, like the trance-like Los Angeles City Of Death, and Gira’s voice remains commanding, unsettling and unforgiving, even when seeking peace. Use of Mellotron and orchestral swirls from Larry Mullins flesh out the band’s more ambitious elements, while Jennifer Gira, Lucy Kruger and Laura Carbone provide siren-like backing vocals.
The universality of his themes means we never get closer to fathoming Gira or the band. Which is just as it should be – everything is the same; everything is different with Swans, and their exquisite torture.