As a big time SwansHead I was admittedly pretty disappointed with their last two albums and haven’t revisited them much outside of the months following their releases. They followed three of the most incredible releases ever put out by Swans (‘the trilogy,’ as fans have dubbed it), so there was a pretty high bar to clear, but even if you set that aside the two albums just felt listless, directionless, and muted. Something was missing in the performances, and I was starting to write it off as a consequence of Michael Gira and Norman Westberg getting into their seventies and the band just running out of steam after a fifty year run of endless left turns in the avant garde space. Apparently I was wrong. Even when he can’t walk around the stage and can barely hear anymore, M Gira proves to us that he still has gas in the tank in Birthing. Most Swans records take me a couple of listens to have everything ‘click’ but this time around all I had to do was make it to “The Merge.” That “I love you mommy” tape followed by an explosion of chaotic noise immediately made everything else coalesce and got me to allow myself to be consumed by the wall of sound that followed through to the end of the album. Birthing’s best moments are evocative of the high points of The Glowing Man, and after several re-listens it’s really competing with TGM’s position in my personal Swans tier-list. While I love the idea of Swans experimenting, returning to this well feels so much more satisfying and gratifying, and it honestly seems like it was the same for Gira/Westberg/Hahn/Pravdica/etc too the performances themselves just feel more alive across the record. Not the best Swans, but a real improvement and a great addition to their late catalog.
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