Swans — The Seer

When Michael Gira closed the book on his long-running Swans project in 1997, the act had run the gamut from no-wave post-punk to sludge metal to acoustic male/female-led minstrel pop to experimental ambience soundtracking imaginary films. But no matter what direction the music had taken, Swans was deeply immersed in the goth gutter, a stark habitat that had become progressively more devoid of meaning or relevance the more it was embraced by a “teen spirit”-riddled mainstream, despondent metalheads from Florida named after beauty queens and serial killers, and marketed and sold as a hot trend to kids in mall stores. Gira was smart to end it when he did.

By 2010, that goth gutter ceased to be an issue to anyone but those still stuck in it. The core ingredients of the subculture, or rather the marketing characteristics that inevitably brought the music down to a disrespected level, had been deconstructed, appropriated, and ironized by so many subsequent iterations of indie rock—a realm that Gira personally continued to mine with his Young God record label—that it became possible to introduce music with traditional “goth” elements to a new audience and not be completely disregarded. Thus when the reactivated Swans put out My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, featuring eight raw, visceral, and passionate songs that sound primarily like a fired-up Velvet Underground, the word “goth,” which didn’t even apply, thankfully didn’t come to mind at all. The album was well-received for its songwriting and its balance of beauty and brutality, and the reactivated band was creatively revitalized for a new era.

That this is immediately evident on Swans’ stunning new magnum opus, The Seer, is an understatement. It only takes about 30 seconds for Gira and company, including long-term guitarist Norman Westberg and recent R.E.M. drummer Bill Rieflin, to absolutely bury My Father’s respectable ideas with a near-catastrophic gusher of creativity and ambition. While this isn’t surprising for Gira, who has had an irrepressible career as an artist with a lot to say, it is unusual for any band 30 years into its formation to have such untapped energy while producing work that is neither redundant nor predictable.

In fact, once “The Wolf”—a bare and inelegantly sung folk ballad underlined by a cushion of environmental noise—bursts into the 30-plus minute symphonic noisefest of the title track, all bets are off. This track, which took shape over years of live performance, could be the musical approximation of a spiritual fever dream brought on by the consumption of wild roots in the jungles of South America. Complete with a  familiar avant garde swirl, its exercise in harmonica, guitar squalor, and percussive dynamics makes a greater argument for Swans as the forefathers of post-rock than the ongoing purveyors of goth noise. It would constitute a whole album for Godspeed or Mogwai, not just the anchor of a much larger whole.

But there are two other pieces of similar length and quality here, and with a total playing time of 2 full hours, The Seer’s greatest accomplishment is its justification of its own length. “The Apostate” is another live creation turned into something bigger, and follows a phoenix-from-the-flames formula to unveil the record’s most psychedelic (and Zeppelin-esque) groove from a bed of squealing guitar and fluttering violins after 13 minutes of cacophony. “A Piece of the Sky” bests both of them, however. Starting with a field recording of rain or possibly fire, the 20-minute whirlwind proceeds though a cut-up vocal chorus (courtesy of former longtime member Jarboe, who has been otherwise absent from the new lineup) into a chamber-music din created by baroque instrumentation. The piece is a callback to the band’s later ‘90s work, both shapeshifting and uncategorizable, other than that lazy tag of post-rock again. Gira’s crooning at the end truly knocks it out of the ballpark: a bit like Johnny Cash trying to sing Jarvis Cocker, it helps the whole piece come together, ultimately proving to be one of the album’s highlights.

The overt mystical textures explored in these epic pieces and the ringing, proggy pulse of “Avatar” may dominate the sound of the record, but it is the threat of these influences upon Gira’s more straightforward rustic and folkish bent that give The Seer its cohesion. “Lunacy,” the lush, melodic opener of country angst that boasts guest appearances from Low’s Alan and Mimi, announces an impending loss of innocence in the repeated mantra, “Your childhood is over.” The hyperventilating breaths and tribal chanting of “Mother of the World” might mark the moment that loss occurs, while “The Seer Returns” revels in it, offering up sultry, danceable swagger with delta-blues stylings even as it discusses apocalyptic death. The atonal, disturbing “93 Ave. B Blues” features sax skronking and an ominous undercurrent that surely represents the darkest side of this vision quest. After it, everything else brings welcome respite—including a heartfelt and gentle performance from Yeah Yeah Yeah’s howler Karen O. on the ballad “Song for a Warrior.”

But even with all its inherent darkness, not once does The Seer feel oppressive or ugly in the way that Swans is iconic of those characteristics, and that alone deserves the highest accolade. Gira is now creating triumphant music that defines his ultimate transcendence over any particular scenes, sounds, or styles, and Swans' The Seer is his victory lap.