After
Michael Gira disbanded the brutal, beautiful
Swans in 1997, he did anything but go quietly into the mists of avant rock legend. He ran his label Young God, wrote and published fiction, formed and cut half a dozen albums with
Angels of Light, and produced and released recordings by numerous acts, including the first offerings by
Devendra Banhart.
Gira reconvened the
Swans project for
My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, eight songs that pick up in part where 1997's
Soundtracks for the Blind left off, while remaining firmly in the present with the influence of
Angels of Light and his solo records in the mix. This edition of
Swans contains various former members, including guitarists
Norman Westberg and Christoph Hahn, drummers Phil Puleo (who played with
Swans and
Angels of Light) and
Thor Harris (ex of
the Angels), and bassist
Chris Pravdica. Guests include
Banhart,
Bill Rieflin (who also guested with a previous edition of
Swans), and
Mercury Rev's
Grasshopper. The chimes that introduce the nine-and-a-half-minute opener, "No Words/No Thoughts," give way to martial, massive no wave guitars and pummeling kick drums and tom-toms.
Gira begins his powerfully incantatory roar as the track shapes and twists, rumbling and thundering. Likewise, "My Birth" contains
Swans' hypnotic, punishing -- if more refined -- repetition with a sawing dulcimer added in the high end for more tension.
Gira's lyrics are still concerned with the extremities of human experience as they encounter the blind light of the divine and the bottomless heart of darkness. There is great power in this music; it points at the margins of violence, but never quite gets there ("Eden Prison," with
Gira's vocals amid a swirling mass of in-the-red instrumentation and tribal drumming, is a solid example). "Jim" is the dead cross where late-era
Swans and
Angels of Light intersect. There are other places here, such as "Reeling the Liars In," where
Gira performs solo on acoustic guitar, or on the closer "Little Mouth," where the meld of acoustic and electric instruments as well as chant-like multi-voice choruses create an even wider depth of field. In classic
Swans confrontational mode, "You Fucking People Make Me Sick" features
Banhart and
Gira's young daughter singing "I love you/Young flower/Now give me/What is mine” to one another tenderly, before industrial sounds, textures, and hammering percussion rain down on the listener; it's jarring, disturbing. All this serves to underscore that
My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky is a mercilessly intense and beautiful record that only
Swans could pull off, and that no matter who plays in the band,
Gira was and is
Swans: their sound, their musical and poetic vision, their heartbeat. ~ Thom Jurek