Review Summary: 2024 was the year that I actually got a chance to see Swans live.
2024 was the year that I actually got a chance to see
Swans live.
Swans is a band who I, in total admittance, only first heard about through this very website, when 2012’s
The Seer was named the staff’s Album of the Year. Through my own curiosity, I heard the stories of Swans’ history, specifically their no-wave origins and the implausible circumstances driving this band to reunite, nearly 30 years after initially forming. For someone who was just diving into the wild world of “music nerd-dom”,
The Seer was an impenetrable listen that didn’t click for me much at all upon first, second, and even third listen. But through a lot of confusion and stubbornness, I grew to love not just the “nu-Swans” trilogy of
The Seer,
To Be Kind, and
The Glowing Man, but also their expansive back catalog as far back as 1983’s proto-industrial watershed
Filth. This was probably the most rewarding band I had ever listened to, one whose density and mystifying sonic palette I eventually figured out, and I wound up enjoying so much of what
Michael Gira and the gang had created. I finally got Swans.
In support of their 2023 album
The Beggar, Michael Gira and company packed up their gear and toured the USA in 2024, eventually landing at a very small venue near my town. I had heard the stories of how wild this band’s live shows were, so I simply couldn’t resist. I had to see them in concert.
And I did.
To fundraise for the band’s next studio album tentatively titled “Birthing”, Swans released
Live Rope, a lengthy live album chronicling their Williamsburg, Brooklyn show, with a few additional live tracks scattered across several editions. Capping off the tour, Gira and the gang unleashed a monster of a live recording, one that erupts with the same kind of daring artistic attitudes that made the band a treasure for music fans.
Now,
Live Rope is a fantastic live album, but it’s not flawless. It’s long and droning, but the big issue that keeps it from the same perfection I see in
Talking Heads’
Stop Making Sense or
Parannoul’s
After the Night is something I still struggle to coherently articulate.
And really, it’s all my own damn fault.
To my surprise, on the day of the Swans concert I attended, I arrived at the venue to see people of all ages. It wasn’t just the elder goths smoking cigarettes outside on the patio, those who grew up with the no-wave classic
Filth or the dark phantasma of
Children of God. It wasn’t just the 30-year-old music nerds who happened to find pure musical immersion in
The Seer or
To Be Kind. There were teenagers who were buying their first vinyl record of
Soundtracks for the Blind (with money given to them by their parents, who were attending the same show). It was kind of revelatory, seeing how this band’s music had cascaded throughout multiple generations. What originally felt like some well-kept, in-the-know secret that only the extremely diligent and musically curious knew, Swans were now out in the open and had captured the hearts of every generation they occupied even up to 2024. Now more than ever, their signature was crystal clear.
Swans didn’t play many old songs at the show. Aside from “The Hanging Man” from
leaving meaning. and a massively extended rendition of “The Beggar”, all the songs performed didn’t have a studio version at the time. But from a band notorious for expanding the songs’ live performances far beyond their studio lengths, you couldn’t really tell. Really, these renditions were the kinds of otherworldly and imposing forms that made this tiny venue quiver in fear and awe. I’ll never forget the roaring, ghoulish noise that erupted during the final passage of “Rope,” how Gira stood on stage, swaying back and forth between opposite sections of the band. It really made it look like he was conjuring demons from the darkest pits of hell. It was hypnotic, forever seared into my psyche, and outclassing every other live act I saw in 2024. This moment is thoroughly preserved on
Live Rope, still feeling so terrifying, and fueling the anticipation of what this song could be in a studio setting. “Rope” is a massive opening statement, one of the best on this album.
Gira’s maniacal laughter at the end of “The Beggar” is the stuff of nightmares, something that unsettles so much. Compared to his barks and shouts during “Oxygen” or “She Loves Us”, this doesn’t feel like something that could fit in a studio recording as comfortably. But somehow, this just feels right in the context of a live performance in front of dozens of terrified onlookers. I’m sure it would have some eerie effect heard through a recording, but the dead silence from the crowd and cavernous acoustics of the venue make this moment so chilling. It’s another highlight for the record.
“Birthing” was the final track played during that show I attended and this
Live Rope rendition tightly grips so much of the tumultuous musical styles that spiraled around and around throughout that performance. It’s a song with a surprisingly uplifting tone near the halfway mark, then rattling and shaking into strange sound manipulation territory in its second half, harkening back to both “A Piece of the Sky” from
The Seer and the “Toussaint L’Ouverture” passage off
To Be Kind. The repetitive hammering of noisy guitars and pounding percussion that’s become oddly familiar for modern Swans music closes out this track. Altogether, it combines so many ideas that have circulated throughout Swans’ post-reunion albums, acting as a logical summation of what this band’s accomplished over the last couple of decades.
Live Rope is a long record, one that demands more patience than even
The Beggar did. And in the same fashion, there aren’t quite as many punctuations beneath the miasma of drone on this album. Those memorable bits that spike upward from the steadily vibrating line of noise are what made the studio albums dynamic, and very much like
The Beggar, this record doesn’t hit those dynamics in the same way. As imposing as these renditions are, they aren’t likely to change anyone’s mind if they found the direction of
The Beggar to be overly indulgent and borderline uninteresting. Looking at
Live Rope through the lens of critique, you’d be forgiven for thinking this doesn’t match the nu-Swans trilogy by any stretch.
Live Rope is not Swans at their most accessible by any stretch (in fact, using the word “accessible” to describe any element of the band is questionable to say the least), but at this length,
Live Rope can’t fully evade the fatigue of its own megalithic size. This is not an album that’ll click in an instant and even when compared to the meditative nature of the studio LP that came before it,
Live Rope will drone. It will struggle to stay on its feet by the end.
But those final moments are simply sublime in how draining and exasperating they can feel once the noise cuts off and Gira begins thanking the audience for their attendance. While it’s not the final track on
Live Rope, “Birthing” concludes the Williamsburg show, stopping on a dime while leaving the audience totally breathless afterward. That striking silence is like a gunshot, a lightning-fast conclusion that will likely require you to adjust your bearings before the applause starts. It hits
hard.
Now, a very long time ago, I said in another review that the greatest thing that a live album can do is make you want to be there.
Live Rope is a pristine example to cite. It’s a fantastic interpretation of Swans’ extensive musical palette, how bolded and underlined their signature is on heavy and experimental music, and how unapologetically daring the band has been throughout decades of revolving activity.
But in a way, the band’s performance at this tiny little venue I saw them at made listening to
Live Rope a bit less impressive. The structure of a studio album wasn’t intended to be identically translated to the stage, especially for a band like Swans, who routinely adjusted their own musical architecture when under live conditions. Listening to
Live Rope after seeing these songs performed live in person is a strange feeling; it paints a different kind of picture. If I had heard
Live Rope before seeing Swans live myself, my reaction would be of pure excitement. I’d say “Wow, this is incredible. I HAVE to see this live!” But the other way around, what I get is thrilling memories of something that I already experienced in a much more extravagant and gripping form.
When thought about under this mindset, this is the conundrum that any frequent concert goer will likely experience at some point in their lifetime. They’ll be forced to compare the live performance to the live recording, and keep in mind, these are two very different things. A performance isn’t just the sound of the music being played: it’s the presence. It’s seeing Gira dizzyingly waving his arms, and looking on terrified that he’s about to open a portal to some other realm. It’s hearing the blast of distortion and noise so loud that you literally fear that the walls of the tiny venue will collapse in on themselves from its volume. This is something that a record, CD, or digital download just can’t match, and something that I, as someone who’s made many reviews of live albums, clearly needed to re-evaluate for myself when looking at this type of artform in particular.
Swans expand the already panoramic scope of their music to a colossal length on
Live Rope, spiraling upward and downward, swelling into enormous pillars of noise and fading out with bated sighs. All of this I applaud and totally confirm that Swans makes it work, though even ignoring the lengthy tracks and somewhat exhausting pacing, Swans are hindered by the live recording format in some very small ways. While other live albums emulate the in-concert experience, many to fantastic effect, I simply can’t digest
Live Rope in the same way. Despite how absolutely impressive this album is, it’s unfortunately an inferior way to experience Swans in a live setting.
But even with my admittedly personal issues with
Live Rope, I’m hoping that this constantly morphing and shifting representation of Swans’ on-stage presence will convince many to see this band live. It really is like nothing you’ve ever heard, seen, or experienced. Through this lens,
Live Rope does its job with flying colors. A live presentation shows Swans at their most untamed, performing on stage like the avant-garde artists that they are, totally unhindered by a studio discipline. But you need to see it for yourself.
Just don’t text on your phone while they’re performing. Gira’s not a fan of that.
