Review Summary: Cheaters Never Prosper
2011 was a good year for Michael Gira. He was flying high after placing third in Dancing with the Stars, and had just finished the Tubular level in Super Mario World. The world was bright and full of possibility. Swans’ last album, with the non-pretentious title of My Father is a Tour Guide who sells Ropes or something, had gone triple platinum in Afghanistan. It was only a question of where Gira would go next.
The Seer was inspired after Gira was invited to the Grammy’s by Alicia Keys, where he was seated next to Stevie Wonder. As they were introduced and shook hands, Gira heard Wonder mutter ‘Cracker’ under his breath. The uncomfortable Gira tried to make small-talk to ease the situation, and asked Wonder the one question that can break even the toughest ice:
“What’s your favorite type of jam?”
Wonder however, was hell-bent on being a smartass and went with:
“Traffic.”
“Mine’s Pearl,” said Gira, smiling awkwardly.
“My mother’s name is Pearl,” Wonder said coldly. “You saying you want to make Pearl Jam? You want to *** my mother, Gira?”
“No,” Gira stammered. “I just meant I like Pearl Jam. You know, Jeremy spoke in class today…”
“My nephew Jeremy has a speech impediment,” Wonder glared at him. “He hasn’t spoken in class all year!”
Frustrated, Gira flung his hands desperately in the air, knocking over his drink, but Stevie Wonder caught it in mid-air, leading Gira to suspect that Wonder wasn’t blind at all, and only had mild astigmatism.
Later that night, Gira overheard Andrea Bocelli refer to him as ‘wispy-haired and scrotum-faced,’ which while not untrue, hurt his feelings. It was then that Gira understood that all the blind celebrities in Showbizland had been faking in order to get the best parking spaces at award shows. He decided to test his theory by sticking his foot out and seeing if famed blind Japanese composer Yatsuhashi Kengyo would trip over it, but then remembered that Kengyo hadn’t been invited to the Grammy’s that year, having died in 1685. The Seer would become Gira’s statement of protest against people who abuse the system for their own benefit.
He raced home after the Grammy’s, and gathered all the Swans in his bachelor pad, and after watching a little Keeping Up with the Kardashians, they got down to business. The Seer would become their swan-song. Like all their other songs.
The Seer is the sound of a man, powerless against circumstance and politics. It is the sound of a man who has just put his last dollar into a vending machine, only to see his Cheesy Puffs get stuck, pinned against the glass. The sound of a guy slitting his wrists with an old banana. The sound of a man whose mother told him he was better than all the other boys in school, all the while hitting his knees with a cast-iron pan.
What Gira didn’t know then was that The Seer would become a cross-culture hit, earning him his first Billboard #1 hit, with the terse and catchy first single The Apostate. By 2012, The Seer was being played in the waiting rooms of most optometrists around the country. Gira would also get vengeful satisfaction, as Stevie Wonder was exposed for the fraud he was, and executed by firing squad for cheating the government out of dozens of dollars’ worth of validated parking. Filled with righteous pride, Gira got Cheaters Never Prosper tattooed on his chest.
After the success of The Seer, the lives of Swans would never be the same. Dulcimer player Phil Puleo finally achieved his dream of opening a small chain of Pet Grooming boutiques. Vibraphone expert Thor Harris’ life would be adapted into a series of Marvel movies. Bassist Christopher Pravdica was deported by Trump, sent back to Bratislava for having a foreign name, where he was murdered by Mossad for occasionally playing the Jew’s harp. Jarboe would use her newfound fame to acquire the rest of her name back from the pawn shop she sold it to, and Gira would go on to learn just how finicky the ‘Non’ part of ‘Non-consensual’ can be.
