Swans at Terminal West, Atlanta, July 22, 2016

At least a couple of times in life, one ought to experience some extreme or another of human experience: childbirth, summiting a difficult mountain, extended sensory deprivation or deep meditation, completing an ultra-marathon, and other such activities.  I would add to that list my experience last night at the front of the stage for a live Swans' show.

Only slightly less intense was the opener, avant-garde cellist Okkyung Lee.

Lee's approach to the cello is more visceral than compositional - she's seemingly more interested in exploring the range of sounds she can produce from the instrument than sticking to something that can be written down in musical notation.  Her fingers slide rapidly down the strings producing sounds like ambulance sirens, and she holds the strings down at the very end to produce other effects that sound like bird songs. She plays with a furious intensity that, while certainly not anything one could call "rock" music or any of it's subgenres, would appeal to certain fans of thrash, metal, or extreme post-rock - in other words, Swans' fans.

It was a refreshing and bracing warm-up act.  Coincidentally, the last time we were at Terminal West, exactly one month ago - in fact the last show to which we've been - the opener was also a soloist on an instrument not traditionally the whole of a set, the drummer Majeure, opening for Black Mountain. Like Majeure, but also unlike him in so many other ways, Lee galvanized the audience and opened our minds for what was to follow.   

Swans came on stage at 9:30 sharp.  We got to Terminal West a little after 7:30 and were able to get a spot right up front at the center of the stage, arguably the spot spot in the house, and there wasn't even the usual security barrier separating the audience from the stage.  We watched the entire show maybe two feet away from Lee and Swans' frontman Michael Gira.

Sadly, percussionist extraordinaire Thor Harris is not touring with Swans, although his playing is a prominent part of the new Glowing Man LP, as he is now pursuing his own, solo project (which comes to Eddies' Attic, of all places, October 15).  However, the band was augmented by keyboardist Paul Oakenfish, who backed opener Little Annie when Swans played Terminal West last year.

Swans opened with a new, or at least unrecorded (as far as I know) song, followed by Screen Shot from To Be Kind.  After these two openers, which by the way, lasted a combined 45 minutes, the band launched into The Glowing Man with the first two tracks from the new LP, Cloud of Forgetting and Cloud of Unknowing.  Those two songs took us to about 11:00 pm, when Gira had the other musicians clear the stage and brought out a special guest musician, former long-time Swans member Jarboe.

Jarboe joined the band in 1985 and was the most prominent member of the band beside Gira.  She was in the band, despite many other roster changes, until Swans initially disbanded in 1997.  There were many reports of bad blood and a falling out between Gira and Jarboe, but apparently nothing that 19 years couldn't heal.  It was also significant that Jarboe, an Atlanta native, chose to support her friend Gira, whose reputation has been tainted by rape allegations brought by singer Larkin Grimm. Addressing those allegations, Jarboe told Creative Loafing, 

"When I first got wind of all of that, my support was very clear. On my Facebook page — for me, pictures speak louder than words — I posted a photograph of him with his arms around me, and the two of us embracing each other when we were younger. That was my statement about the incident. My fans on that page got it. They understood what that meant. I wouldn’t have posted that if I had any remote belief in those accusations. You’re talking about a major mentor for me, and a great love of my life, and I will always support him in that way."    

Photo posted to Facebook by show promoter Alex Weiss

As expected, Jarboe performed only one song, Blood On Your Hands, nearly a cappella, with only a droning background provided by lap steel guitarist Christoph Hahn.  It was mesmerizing and, as you can see in the picture above, held the audience spell-bound for the entire performance (for the record, I really was front and center for the show; that girl in the hat stepped right in front of me when Jarboe took the stage, but after the picture was taken, I later got back to the edge of the stage between her and the dude in the white shirt). She looked and sounded great, and although Gira's announced that this tour is the last by this incarnation of Swans, her appearance and the obvious warmth between her and Gira on stage support our hopes that she might be included in the next version of Swans, whatever that might be. 

The best received record of Swans during the Jarboe era was arguably Soundtracks For the Blind, and Jarboe is often criticized in some circles for the live performance of the controversial song Yum Yab Killers on that record.  The song is intentionally abrasive and confrontational (hey, this is Swans we're talking about), but I think the studio version of the song on Jarboe's solo Sacrificial Cake (1995) LP is the better version.

But anyway, although historic, Jarboe's reunion with the band after almost 20 years was less than 10 minutes of a 2 1/2-hour show.  After Blood On Your Hands, Jarboe left the stage and Swans launched into the title track of The Glowing Man, slightly shorter than the live version in the video below.  Last night's performance started in at about the 11:00-minute mark of the video version, which is more faithful to the recorded, studio version.

So about those "extremes of human experience":  the entire set was intense and emotional and unrelentingly loud - I didn't regret wearing earplugs at all, and my ears were still ringing anyway after the show was over.  Swans have developed a fearsome reputation, founded mostly on their earliest, per-Jarboe years, of playing at painfully loud volumes during concerts, sometimes leading to police stopping shows.  Legend famously has it their music was loud enough to "induce vomiting in members of the audience." Gira was also notably confrontational with the audience, stepping on people's fingers resting on the stage, pulling people's hair and, notably, physically assaulting anyone caught in the crowd headbanging, something he detested.  He has mellowed over the years, and the only negative interaction he had with the audience was stopping one person from video-taping the set, and that was just by finger-wagging and shaking his head "no."

Some of the drones went on a little too long, in my humble opinion, but when the band got going, like in the "Joseph" portion of The Glowing Man, the band was an unstoppable juggernaut.  It was exhilarating, it was exhausting, and for all the doom and gloom, it was strangely uplifting.  The likes of this particular line-up of Swans is not likely to be seen again any time soon, and I'm grateful that I've had the opportunity to experience them twice, and to witness Jarboe's reunion with her old band.

Tonight

Swans are touring the country in the final performances by the current lineup of the band, and they have announced that they’ll be joined by their former vocalist/keyboardist/arranger/writer Jarboe for one night only at their concert in Atlanta tonight (July 22). She’ll be performing Blood On Your Hands from the Children of God album, although it may be tempting to get her to perform When Will I Return? from Swans' current The Glowing Man LP, too.

Economics 102

Faced with fewer bands touring through the American South, club owners appear to have re-evaluated their own profit margins and the sources of their income.  Why pay some band from New York a big fee to perform, when a local band can fill the room or at the very least cover the costs for the night at little or no money?  

Local music is an important part of any city's music scene and part of the joy of living in a city with a thriving local music scene like Atlanta is watching our local favorites grow and mature as artists.  But when the club owners no longer can pack the room with fans of the latest buzz band, they have to figure out how they can afford to keep the doors open with fewer customers, so with lower volume, they have to reduce their costs by paying the locals less and less, and before too long the music fan is faced with enduring whatever band the club can scrape together to play for free that night and with putting up with fewer and fewer comforts (AC, clean toilets) in the club itself.

In a perfect world, our fine local bands would rise to the occasion and fill the empty stages left by the touring bands that refuse to venture too far from home, but in the imperfect world in which we live, there's a downward spiral as owners realize they can make greater profits by paying the bands less, or even nothing at all, and the quality of the music on stage suffers as a result.

So, yes, I've been to fewer shows this year, partly because there's been fewer shows this year, in my humble opinion, worth seeing.

But then, suddenly, an oasis appears in the desert.  Over the next week, Atlanta will get to experience Swans (Friday), Fear of Men (Monday), Marissa Nadler (Tuesday), and Boogarins (Wednesday), and then almost nothing for the month of August.  But then, just as dramatically, we'll get another overload of shows on September 8, 9, 10, and 11, with  Car Seat Headrest, (8th), Angel Olsen (9th), Quilt and Mutual Benefit (10th), and Joanna Newsom (11th).  

So don't lose hope, Atlanta, there's still good music to be heard out there, and in the meantime we can support our local artists like Little Tybee at Terminal West on August 5, Takenobu at Eddie's Attic on August 13, and Hello Ocho and Jeffrey Bützer at The Earl on August 29 and September 3, respectively.    

Economics 101

A couple of weeks ago - although to be honest, it might have been a couple months ago by now - my friend L. noted how few good shows there seems to be in Atlanta lately.

The remark gave me reason to think.  It does seem like I've been to far fewer shows so far this year than I had by the same time last year.  Sure, some of it may have been due to me just not getting out as much, but some of it is also that it seems like there have been far fewer good shows to go out to this year.

Now why is that?, I wonder.  It seems that there are no fewer shows at The Earl, The Masquerade, Smith's Olde Bar, and all the other stages in Atlanta, so it's not that there's fewer shows.  So some of it is probably due to my own musical taste, which is not always consistent with current musical fashions.  To be sure, the indie rock renaissance of the 2000s is now over, and more and more, the clubs are booking EDM and hip-hop acts, which are not my own personal preference.  Nothing against it, but it's just that it was the creativity and artistry of the indie rock renaissance that got this old man back into the clubs again.  But while some clubs are now booking more and more EDM and hip-hop, other clubs are going in another direction, and booking more hardcore punk, more metal, and more scruffy garage bands, and while the overlap of my tastes and the latter group is larger than the overlap with the first group, it's less compelling to me to go out to a club just to be sonically assaulted by a three-chord band.

So the music's changing, and I'm getting even older still.  That's the way of the world, I guess.  But it seems like there's more to it than just that - after all, there still are a lot of new records coming out that I enjoy, but those bands don't seem to be playing here in Atlanta.

Now what's the reason for that?, I wonder, and decide that it's the economics of the music industry. As everyone knows, these days, most bands make most of their money not by album sales as in the past, but by touring, one night at a time, one show at a time, one cover charge at a time.   The tour has become the most important source of income, and therefore, gets planned the most carefully.  

For a band coming out of one of either of the two poles of the new music axis, that is, Brooklyn or Portland/Seattle, there's a lot of logistics and economics that go into planning a tour.  You can knock off a lot of gigs within a few hours drive from each other in the Boston-New York-Philadelphia-Washington corridor if you're Brooklyn based, or in the Seattle-Portland-Sacramento-San Francisco corridor if you're on the West Coast.  But to play the American South means fewer clubs that are further apart with 8 to 10 hour drives in between, and smaller clubs with lower cover charges, so it winds up costing you more in terms of gas, food, and lodging to make less money.  

It's more economical to run a smaller circuit within 12 hours of home at large clubs where the patrons don't mind paying $40 to get in than it is to drive 12 hours from gig to gig to play for a handful of fans who've only paid $5 at the door.

I don't know if any of this is fact - I'm not in the music business, but it makes sense to me.  If I was a NY band, I wouldn't drive across the South to make a fraction of what I could make between Montreal and Baltimore.

So, the shows have been fewer, but I've really enjoyed what I have managed to see down here so far, ranging from Julien Baker at Aisle 5 to Animal Collective at Buckhead Theater to Quilt at The Earl. But there have been long stretches of time between and since those gigs that have felt like a musical desert to me.

And now an oasis is in sight.  This Friday night, four days from now (four!), Swans return to Terminal West touring behind their great new album The Glowing Man.
  

And then the next week, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, we'll be graced with Fear of Men at The Masquerade, Marissa Nadler at The Earl, and Boogarins also at The Earl, in that order. Four great shows in six nights, and there hasn't been four good show in the previous six weeks, or even two months, so let's enjoy it while we've got it, my friends.  

Thor!

Thor Harris (background) with Swans at Terminal West, March 2015

Okay, first the bad news.  Brace yourself, because this is going to sting a little:

Percussionist extraordinaire Thor Harris is not touring with Swans, even though his playing was prominently featured on Swans' latest LP, The Glowing Man, and he will not be appearing with Swans next week (next week!) at Terminal West.

Now the good news.  Brace yourself, because this will be hard to believe:

Percussionist extraordinaire Thor Harris is touring with a post-rock, new-music chamber ensemble calling themselves "Thor Harris & Friends," and they will be playing on October 15 at, get this, Eddie's Attic.    

Reasons to go to Decatur, Part 1:  Thor Harris & Friends at Eddie's Attic.

Swans

From the 1987 Swans LP, Children of God, with Jarboe on vocals, showing how far ahead of the times Swans were even back then.

While we're at it, here's Her from 1992's Love of Life, featuring a very Atlanta-specific sample.

Swans will be performing at Terminal West on July 22.  They won't be sounding like these clips (which is neither good nor bad, just is).

New Swans Song

Swans at Terminal West, March 28, 2015 

Swans return to Terminal West on July 22, 2016.  

Swans

Swans at Terminal West, March 28, 2015 

Swans will be returning to Terminal West on July 22 as a part of their Glowing Man tour.  The Glowing Man LP is not out yet, but meanwhile they're teasing us with this 2-minute excerpt.   For best effect, play it loud.

Swans Return To Atlanta

Yesterday, one from the vault; today, one from the future - an excerpt from the new Swans album The Glowing Man.  The album comes out in June, but of course Swans' tour in support of the album doesn't come anywhere near the American South includes a July 22 date at Terminal West.  

My body is ready.

Swans at Terminal West, Atlanta, March 28, 2015

Little Annie and Swans were at Terminal West last night for what is probably my last March Madness show for the year.  Damn, we have some shit we need to talk about.

March Madness, at least in concept, is about all of the musicians passing through Atlanta on their way to or from Austin's SXSW, a sort of informal Savannah Stopover festival.  But this past week, it has been dominated by artists on their way to Knoxville's Big Ears Festival - by Wednesday night's performances by Sam Amidon and Nels Cline at Eddie's Attic, who performed at Big Ears yesterday, and by Swans and Little Annie, who perform at Big Ears today (Sunday). 

Little Annie was last night's opener (obviously).  I had never heard of Little Annie before, except that she's the one singing with Gira on Swans' Some Thing We Do, and so was surprised to meet someone at the show who told me that he was there last night specifically to see Little Annie.  I had no idea what to expect but was still more than a little surprised when a woman closer to my age than what I suspect is yours walked onto the stage carrying a cane.  

According to Wikipedia, Little Annie is a New York-based singer, songwriter, painter, poet, writer, performance artist, pastor, and stage actor.  She first performed on stage as a teenager at Max's Kansas City, singing with her band Annie and the Asexuals.  She later moved to London where she was in producer Adrian Sherwood's house band, singing on the numerous dub (Lee "Scratch" Perry) and industrial (Nurse With Wound) recordings produced there.  After moving back to New York, she became a painter, an actor, and a writer; book titles include You Can't Sing the Blues When You're Drinking Milk, and a collection of poetry called Hell Is A Place Where We Call Each Other Darling.  Now, in addition to singing backup on songs for Swans, she is a cabaret singer, performing with keyboardist Paul Oakenfish last night at Terminal West.   

Amazingly, she took control of the room and had the audience of Swans fans, mostly boisterous young men, in the palm of her hand.  Her songs opened with a number about a "homeless tranny" and included a cover of Tina Turner's Private Dancer that emphatically brought out the pathos at the heart of the song.  Her voice sounded, at least to me, at times like jazz legend Jimmy Scott's, and musically she touched on blues, cabaret, jazz, and other largely ignored musical forms.  The audience clearly loved her and she seemed genuinely touched and appreciative of their approval.  It was a wonderful performance, and not something that I ever would have expected to hear opening a Swans show. 

Is there a band with as fearsome a reputation as Swans? Their music can be abrasive, uncompromising, and confrontational (as well as hypnotic, beautiful, and cathartic), and their volume has legendarily been described as "loud enough to induce vomiting in the audience."  The band members are the very picture of gravitas and seriousness, and frontman Michael Gira once reportedly jumped off stage to beat up an audience member for being "too into" a particularly daunting part of a performance.  Jars full of complimentary ear plugs were available at the front door and at Terminal West's two bars.

After Little Annie finished her set and the band went through a quick check of their set up, the audience busied themselves inserting plugs in their ears and bracing themselves for the show.  The band's big Orange and Ampad amps were set up near the  front of the stage, certainly in front of the drum kit and the percussion area, practically looming over the audience.  There wasn't much chattering, maybe because of all the ear plugs or maybe out of anticipation for the show about to commence.  In any event, as we waited for the band, there was a general sense of suspense unlike any other show I can remember.

   

I had plugs in my ears as well, which is not something I normally do.  Even more uncharacteristically, soon after percussionist Thor Harris (formerly of Shearwater) started the Swans' set with washes of sound from a gigantic gong, I gave up my position right at the front of the stage and retreated back several rows out of anticipation that all hell was about to break loose.  It did, but not in any way that justified giving up that front-row spot.  In any event, I could see and hear fine from my fall-back position, so not to worry.

Thor was soon joined on stage by drummer Phil Puleo. who added splashes of cymbals and bass-drum kick to Thor's gong, and then by pedal steel player Christoph Hahn, who added thundering screeches of sound that reminded us why we had the earplugs.  Soon Gira and the rest of the band took the stage, and launched into the first song of the long set, an extended mantra of brutalizing guitar riffs and ominous chanting.  I'm not sure what song it was, although it sounded at times like Lunacy, the opener of 2012's The Seer, but it could have been any of several other exercises in extended post-rock crescendo and catharsis, or even a new composition altogether, 

Words simply cannot describe a live Swans' show and I won't try to - it really has to be experienced in order to be understood.  But I will say that thirty or so minutes into the set, when that first song finally concluded and the band had launched into A Little God In My Hands from 2014's To Be Kind, I got sick of the earplugs and took them out during the loudest portion of the song, the sonic blast right after the words "the universal mind," if you're familiar with the song.  I was shocked at first at how much louder everything really was, but also noticed that it wasn't actually painfully loud, and that I could hear all of the dynamics and ranges of the instruments so much better without the earplugs. What's more, I wasn't vomiting, nor was anyone around me.  Listening with the earplugs was like hearing a great band but while underwater and with a bad head cold.  I can honestly report that while the band was certainly loud, they never hurt my ears and at the end of the show, I experienced no ringing or tinnitus like I had with other bands with less fearsome reputations (Acid Mothers Temple, Thee Oh Sees, even Red Baraat).  If you're concerned about going to a Swans show out of fear of hearing damage, don't worry - you may not want to stand right in front of the amps and you should bring earplugs in case you're more sensitive than I, but I found the show so much more enjoyable once I took the earplugs out, and as people in front of me moved away during the course of the evening, I even got close to my original spot at the front of the stage.

After A Little God, the band spent about the next hour or so performing Toussaint L'Ouverture (without the Bring the Sun lead in) and Just a Little Boy from To Be Kind.  I was hoping that they'd bring Little Annie on stage to duet Some Things We Do with Gira, but that didn't happen, It may say something about me that I wasn't able to identify any of the songs performed last night that weren't from To Be Kind, but the next song was another extended exercise in suspenseful build up and release, and the sixth and final song of the 2 1/2-hour set sounded at first like the brutal head-banging intro of Bring the Sun, followed by the equally brutal and equally head-banging finale to To Be Kind, but then launched into a breakneck-speed new song (new to me at least) that might fill the spot in the playlist that Oxygen used to occupy.

The set ended with the band lined up on stage for introductions by Gira and theatrical bows.  There was no encore but after two and a half hours, I don't think anyone was expecting more or felt disappointed by the absence of an encore.  Swans gave a hundred-percent effort, holding nothing back, and by the end of the set there truly was nothing more left to be said. 

I'll grant that Swans' music might not be to everybody's tastes, but those interested in post-rock, post-music, experimental rock, and the avant garde would have loved last night's show,  I love folk-rock and jangle-pop and shoegaze as much as the next person, but in my humble opinion, the trilogy of albums by the reformed Swans, My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky, The Seer, and To Be Kind, are the most significant works of art in any medium so far in the new millennium.  No exaggeration.     

Swans

108 shopping days until Swans perform at Atlanta's Terminal West.  Better start shopping for earplugs now.

March Madness

Hundred Waters at The Earl, July 1, 2014

As previously admitted, I didn't make all that I could out of this years Rocktober; better luck next year, I guess.

Meanwhile, though, March Madness 2015 is already taking shape, including sets by Gang of Four and Father John Misty at the Variety Playhouse and Swans at Terminal West.  Now, it's been announced that Florida's Hundred Waters will be playing The Earl on March 8.

Stay tuned.  More announcements coming soon, I'm sure.

Bored In the USA

Father John Misty at the godforsaken Tabernacle

With a new album coming out next year and on the verge of his next big tour, Father John Misty seems to be channeling his inner crooner (even if he does lift the canned laughter from Swans' Just A Little Boy). 

2014

"As far as biological cause and effect are concerned, music is useless. It shows no signs of design for attaining a goal such as long life, grandchildren, or accurate perception and prediction of the world. Music appears to be a pure pleasure technology, a cocktail of recreational drugs that we ingest through the ear to stimulate a mass of pleasure circuits at once. Compared with language, vision, social reasoning, and physical know-how, music could vanish from our species and the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged." 

- Steven Pinker, "How the Mind Works"

Prodigy

As good a review of To Be Kind as any I've seen, and this 14-year-old kid does it in one take without reading from a script, and discusses the album both in the context of the band's previous output as well as its own merits.  I'm impressed. 

"Genius 'Round the World Stands Hand in Hand, and One Shock of Recognition Runs the Whole Circle 'Round" - Michael Gira

"To Be Kind" Drops Today

With this announcement, the best album of 2014, possibly the best album of the decade, even arguably the greatest album ever, dropped:

Hello There, 

We (Swans) have recently completed our new album. It is called To Be Kind. The release date is set for May 13, 2014. It will be available as a triple vinyl album, a double CD, and a 2xCD Deluxe Edition that will include a live DVD. It will also be available digitally. 

The album was produced by me, and it was recorded by the venerable John Congleton at Sonic Ranch, outside El Paso Texas, and further recordings and mixing were accomplished at John’s studio in Dallas, Texas. We commenced rehearsals as Sonic Ranch in early October 2013, began recording soon thereafter, then completed the process of mixing with John in Dallas by mid December 2013. 

A good portion of the material for this album was developed live during the Swans tours of 2012/13. Much of the music was otherwise conjured in the studio environment. 

The recordings and entire process of this album were generously and perhaps vaingloriously funded by Swans supporters through our auspices at younggodrecords.com via the release of a special, handmade 2xCD live album entitled Not Here/Not Now. See details here: http://bit.ly/1nekqma 

The Swans are: Michael Gira, Norman Westberg, Christoph Hahn, Phil Puleo, Thor Harris, Christopher Pravdica. 

Special Guests for this record include: Little Annie (Annie sang a duet with me on the song Some Things We Do, the strings for which were ecstatically arranged and played by Julia Kent); St. Vincent  (Annie Clark sang numerous, multi-tracked vocals throughout the record); Cold Specks (Al contributed numerous multi-tracked vocals to the song Bring the Sun); Bill Rieflin (honorary Swan Bill played instruments ranging from additional drums, to synthesizers, to piano, to electric guitar and so on. He has been a frequent contributor to Swans and Angels of Light and is currently playing with King Crimson)... 

FULL MUSICIAN CREDITS: Swans: Michael Gira - vocals, electric and acoustic guitar; Norman Westberg - electric guitar, acoustic guitar, vocals; Phil Puleo - drums, percussion, dulcimer, piano, keys, vocals; Christoph Hahn - lap steel guitars, electric guitar, vocals; Thor Harris - drums / percussion, vibes and bells, wind instruments, handmade viola, vocals; Christopher Pravdica - bass guitar, acoustic guitar, vocals. Honorary Swan Forever: Bill Rieflin - (on multiple songs throughout the record) drums / percussion, piano, bass, guitar, synths, keyboards. Guest Musicians: Duet with MG on Some Things We Do - Little Annie. Strings and String Arrangement on Some Things We Do - Julia Kent. Background Vocals on Nathalie Neal, Bring the Sun, Screen Shot, Kirsten Supine - St. Vincent (appears courtesy of Loma Vista Recordings). Background vocals on Bring the Sun - Cold Specks (appears courtesy of Mute Artists LTD). Background Vocals on She Loves Us, A Little God in My Hands - Jennifer Church. More Musicians (Dallas): Violin - Daniel Hart; Mandolin - Rex Emerson; Trombone - David Pierce; Trumpet - Evan Weiss; Piano, Harpsichord, Synth - Sean Kirkpatrick; Piano – John Congleton. 

I love you!
Michael Gira

May 13th.  The day that changed everything.

Swans at Bumbershoot?

Seattle's Bumbershoot music festival (August 30 to September 1) isn't scheduled to release their lineup until May 8, when the announcement will be made at something called the Pink and Purple Pickwick Party at Nuemos, featuring, obviously, Pickwick (the best band you've never heard of).  

All we can do in the meantime, however, is speculate, but looking at the schedule for Swans, who'll be touring this summer behind their terrific new album To Be Kind (AOTY, possibly best album ever), I see they have no dates scheduled after July 6 until some West Coast shows starting September 2 in Denver, followed by September 4 in Seattle and September 6 in Portland, so it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that they could squeeze in a Bumbershoot set sometime between August 30 and September 1.

Swans at Bumbershoot?  You heard it here first.

Swans

Oxygen

Another new song from Swans' To Be Kind. . . featuring Thor (Shearwater) on percussion and clarinet.

A Little God In My Hands

Here's the first song released from the new Swans album To Be Kind, due May 13th. But right now, you can download a copy of A Little God at http://www.self-titledmag.com.  You've been warned . . .