Troxy, Stepney
“Inside our gouged mouth, new home is a liquid that is velvet, black and slick.”
After 40 years of transitioning, the legendary experimental rock act, Swans, gripped East London's Troxy in a relentless recital of nauseating drone-rock seen from their latest iteration post-Pandemic.
The audience remain tentatively seated, captivated by each word spouted from tonight’s grand conductor, Michael Gira, relentlessly poised with an airborne hand and a clutched guitar. Breaking the silence, Gira suddenly permits ridding of the seating arrangement, ensuing a rushing tidal wave to the stage, leaving us transfixed (in close proximity) by the unyielding prowess and undulating reverberation of tonight’s revered Swans.
As a product of New York City's indelible experimental scene, Gira’s project has traversed through myriad tones and backdrops in its tenure: pounding no wave of the 80’s; mystical prog-rock of the 90’s; abrasive industrial-rock of the 10’s. This evening we witness the newly-assembled entourage proceed forth on their 16th LP, The Beggar, which draws upon an ethereal, drone-rock airiness (giving Sunn O))) and Brian Eno a run for their money) forever luring the listener into a unnerving hypnotic trance. As the title track initiates Gira’s poetics of self-flagellation, a resurgence of Swans’ interminable hypnotism and existential suspense begins, incessantly culminating in a monolithic tirade of castrating crescendos.
Surging into Gira’s recent drone-rock afflictions (‘The Hanging Man’; ‘Ebbing’), an exploration of this uniquely-carved lane marks a surefire digression from their punk-inflected past (a-la 2014's To Be Kind) and further into the more nuanced, subtler imposition of their recent pair of records. Whilst these two tracks offer effectual highlights over recent years, ‘The Memorious’ deems reminiscent of an uninspiring drone-rock interpretation of their punk-heyday ‘Screen Shot’, with ‘No More of This’ brooding like an aimless ambling of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.
More often than not, tracks from the pandemic-stricken LP of 2020, Leaving Meaning, captures a more imaginative space, underscored by the unforgiving hands of Gira himself. In an effort to close out tonight’s reverberations, repeated notes from Gira’s acoustic guitar support the LP’s title track as it births swelling percussion and dies an admirable demise at the hands of rapturous applause. Stunned by a cataclysmic finish within a specially-curated finale, the several members on-stage at last release us from their otherworldly clutch, leaving us breathless at their relentless force majeure.
For this is the unequivocal legacy of Swans, in spite of their historic iterations and transgressions, the audience will be forever grasped in the palm of Gira’s proverbial third hand. Scarcely uttering audience acknowledgement tonight, the crowd became engulfed by a tirade of drone-driven atmospherics, catapulted into Gira’s depths of despair: a confounding cut against Swans’ transcending repertoire over the past 40 years.
7/10
Swans' latest LP, The Beggar, is out now via Young God Records and can be found below.
Photo is courtesy of Alessandro Souza whose work can be found here.
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