Swans In Concert: ATP Festival 2011
Listen: Swans In Concert
Swans at the Paramount Theatre for All Tomorrow's Parties.
Gisel Florez for NPR hide caption
Swans at the Paramount Theatre for All Tomorrow's Parties.
Gisel Florez for NPRLanguage Advisory: This is a live concert recording, and may contain language not suitable for all audiences.
Swans never broke up. The blistering and artful noise-rock band just went away for a while — 13 years, to be exact. From all accounts, every time Swans hit the stage during its harrowing existence, it was like a premonition of End Times.
After several years and other projects, frontman Michael Gira reconvened the band in 2010. It wasn't a reunion, because the resulting new album, My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, was more like the next step. Live, Gira is not unlike his kindred spirit in Woven Hand, shepherding a swirl of foot-stomping chaos, but in five songs smeared over two hours, Swans was absolutely Wagner-ian in scope. The result was masculine and relentless, yet alluring in every respect.