Michael Gira has been releasing music with Swans since 1982, putting this newest album, The Beggar, at just past the 40-year mark. For over ten years, between 1997 and 2009, Gira was operating as Angels Of Light, with Swans fully reactivated in 2010. The stable line-up of Swans then “dissolved” in 2017, but Swans continues as something like a community of musicians, many former Swans themselves, with Gira at the helm. This is the second record by this more fluid ensemble, the first being 2019’s leaving meaning, and features once-and-current Swans drummers Larry Mullins and Phil Puleo, guitarist Kristof Hahn, bassist Christopher Pravdica, and former Angel Of Light bassist Dana Schecter, as well as a few other fine players and singers.
Anyone who has been following Swans on their long journey is going to have their favorite era(s), as much has changed over the years. From the confrontational, proto-industrial slam of the early days, to the addition of Jarboe on vocals and keyboards in the mid-’80s, to the almost folk-rock turn of the late ’80s and early ’90s, a lot of ground was covered by Swans MK 1. As the band wound down for the first time in the mid-1990s, they began to incorporate found sounds and textural deconstructions to great effect. In 1997, they did one last tour billed as “Swans Are Dead,” and then it was over.
Gira quickly started Angels Of Light, releasing a number of excellent, occasionally almost pastoral (relatively speaking) recordings that, despite their quality, didn’t seem to attract wide attention at the time. That lack of recognition did not appear to figure into the reformation of Swans so much as Gira’s desire to experience ecstasy through sound again before the final curtain, something more easily done through Swans’ sonic hurricane. I may be paraphrasing here, but that’s what I recall!
In any case, Swans music has been pretty important to me at various times in my life, and so I was very excited to learn of the initial reformation. Indeed, the show I saw in 2010 was transcendent. However, the record released at the time, My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky, did not entirely connect. It felt to me like a band trying a variety of different things—some old, some new—to find a direction forward. That made sense at the time, though, and I was curious to see where things would go.
However, from there came a series of records that became progressively more dense and monolithic. Musical passages were played and played again, song lengths routinely passed 10 minutes—and even broke 30 minutes—and short pieces of lyrics were used as something like mantras. Don’t get me wrong; this was still singular, uncompromising music, and with each release Swans’ audience grew, a well-deserved development. But I personally began to have a hard time finding a way into the music, and the dynamic elements I loved were often brief or not present at all. I was entirely stymied by 2016’s The Glowing Man, another triple LP, and not entirely surprised when Gira announced the band as it had been was dissolving. Where else could they go? But I couldn’t crack the next record, leaving meaning, which retained many of the above-mentioned features, either.
So it’s a bit of a revelation to find that The Beggar, the group’s 16th studio album, is easily my favorite Swans record since 2010. In fact, these songs put me in a place not unlike that of the 1990s work that struck such a chord, mixed with some of the gentleness and melody of Angels Of Light, while still adding something new and of our time. In short, this music breathes and is full of the space and dynamics I’d missed. Make no mistake, this is still challenging music— “The Beggar Lover (Three)” breaks the 40-minute mark, and may as well be five different songs—but it’s also an easy, often joyful, listen. That is, as long as you also find reflecting on shame and the finite nature of life to be easy and, at least sometimes, joyful. 
With Gira approaching 70 and the germs of this record formed during the pandemic, this strikes me as quite an existential album, with several explicit references to dying and being “done.” “The Parasite” starts the record with some gentle strumming ala Angels Of Light, and becomes even more ethereal as it goes. “When the revelation comes, does it erase the host that lives?” asks Gira, one of a number of unanswerable questions here that are sometimes posed with impassive equanimity and sometimes with real humor. In fact, that humor is nowhere more apparent than on the following track, “Paradise Is Mine,” a rolling, foreboding, push-and-pull of a song where Gira cuts to the chase, asking himself “Am I ready to die?” in the kind of voice that a creepy uncle might use to goadingly ask a wide-eyed kid if they’re ready to ride a rollercoaster.
Despite its name, “Los Angeles: City Of Death,” is musically uplifting, again putting me in mind of Angels Of Light. It’s followed by “Michael Is Done,” an airy, soaring tune with lyrics that would seem to be meditating on what happens when everything… stops. Who knows, huh? “Unforming” takes things down musically, with Gira intoning against sparse instrumentation, including piano, about wanting “freedom from fear.” It’s a beautiful song of the kind that might’ve appeared on 1989’s The Burning World. As much as Gira has tried to distance himself from that record it remains among my favorites, and this is a lovely, vaporous tune.
“The Beggar” is surely the centerpiece of the record, building softly while the lyrics reference themes of… well, love and self-loathing and combinations thereof. The song finally breaks into a wonderful, bass-heavy passage that wouldn’t be out of place in an early Killing Joke song. Then the whole thing comes down again only to build back up with plenty of dynamism and lots of implied tension. I can only imagine what this will become in a live setting.
After this intensity comes a real quieting in “No More Of This” which, if it’s not a bittersweet goodbye to everything, will do until Gira pens such a thing. “Ebbing” follows so closely, musically, on “No More Of This” that they seem almost of a piece. “Why Can’t I Have What I Want Anytime That I Want” rounds out this chiming, wistful tryptic, traveling unhurriedly toward the end of CD 1.
CD 2 is comprised of two songs, the first being the aforementioned “The Beggar Lover (Three),” which takes “The Beggar,” adds “”found sounds as well as extracted/reconfigured tracks” from the last two Swans albums, and blows the whole thing up to 43:51. It’s a far more cinematic listen than the shorter track, and if you find yourself on the road for three quarters of an hour it’ll sound especially engaging. “The Memorious” carries on with some of the themes from “The Beggar Lover (Three),” ending the full album on a much more unsettling note than if you only listened only to CD 1. In the spirit of the record itself, choose whichever finish you desire!
I have to note that the track listing I described follows the 2xCD release, with the vinyl shuffling the order and editing some tracks to fit onto two LPs. “The Beggar Lover (Three)” isn’t included on the vinyl at all. So while the LP format might make it easier to digest the record and will give you a somewhat different experience, you’ll want to put that digital download to use to hear the whole deal.
If you’re like me and have been looking for a way back into the music of Michael Gira and Swans, I can tell you the door is open again. I’ve already listened to this album more than any other post-reformation Swans record and have no inclination to stop. I also find myself really considering the lyrics, if not occasionally even singing them (always an interesting headspace with Swans!). And if you’ve enjoyed the density and physical catharsis of the Swans of the 2010s, I think you’ll still find yourself appreciating having some room to breathe. After all, you’ve been wearing a mask for the last couple years, right?