Album Rating: 4.2

Super review. Album is admittedly a surprising return to form, even though I liked their last few records. Captures that deep, dark energy they’ve been missing for a while

Album Rating: 3.5

I think this one captures the Swans live sound maybe the most accurately from all post-2010 records. I mean, both Seer and TBK have these endless one chord parts, but they are accompanied by more composed stuff and even some "songs", many of the long tracks have somewhat elaborate progressions and gradation. The Glowing Man is less like that but still not as minimalistic and raw as Birthing imho.

That's maybe also what I occasionally find overlong and too meandering about this record, I really love when the intensity of their live sound was transformed into some genuinely interesting and surprising choices and compositions when recorded (Seer, TBK and Beggar too to some degree).

Anyways, I'm very interested how will the autumn tour look like - will it be exactly same as the last one? Will Gira and co again transform the songs into something new that will never get recorded in studio, as they did after Glowing Man? I will be there to find out for sure.

Of fucking course the one piece of shit to 1 this is Tundra...of course

Album Rating: 4.5

To this day, I don't see what you cranky olds see in The Seer. I like it, but it is easily the weakest reunion record and the worst offender in terms of the aimless repetition (that 20 minute section in the title track did not need to be that long and no matter how much I have grown to enjoy their work now, my opinion on that has not changed). To me, The Seer is more of a template that they improved upon with each subsequent release with Glowing Man and Beggar being particularly notable standouts to me.



All that to say this new one is making a strong impression on me, even if the dna of The Seer is the most noticeable it has ever been. The tighter runtimes with a wider variety of individual sections and each track being strikingly different from the last is a big, big plus. Birthing feels the most refined since My Father.

Album Rating: 5.0

Placeholder 5 for one of my most memorable first listens of an album ever (driving up the western coast of Iceland absolutely blasting this)

Album Rating: 4.0

> To this day, I don't see what you cranky olds see in The Seer.



I'm a cranky old but I agree. Frankly, I think the first four reunion albums were a direct line both conceptually and in terms of quality.

Album Rating: 4.2

[3]

I do like it but it’s nowhere near the perfect record it’s touted as

Album Rating: 4.5

Right? At times, it smacks of musical elitism. The Seer hit right at the perfect window for it to be exciting to old fans but bewildering to people who never knew they existed (which was a lot of people). I don't know why My Father didn't make anywhere near as big of a splash, but it would have helped newcomers to understand what there was to be excited about. And given The Seer evolved into Bring the Sun which evolved into The Glowing Man which evolved into the Beggar/The Beggar Lover which evolved into Birthing / The Healers, it is really hard not to see it as an early sketch of something that later became great.

Album Rating: 4.5

As much as I love the epics most of my favorite songs by them are in the sub-10 minute mark (God Damn The Sun, Failure, The Seer Returns, Screen Shot, Oxygen) so I'm curious to see what the next album will be like if this really is the end of the "all-consuming sound worlds" era

wtf new swans

Album Rating: 4.0

It wasn’t until the hammering came down in the t/t when I found myself fully invested. The first 50 minutes or so does feel like reheated excerpts of already released material, especially from The Glowing Man. I still love it (never seem to get enough, really), but unlike The Seer, this album doesn’t bring anything new/radical to the table. Right now I’m not sure where I’d place this in the line of post-reunion releases, certainly not at the level of the trilogy, and I’m also a sucker for Leaving Meaning, so dunno. Red Yellow is currently my favorite, but I guess it’ll change after repeated listens, to which I’m really looking forward to.

The only track here that truly subverts expectations is 'The Merge'. I could do with a whole album's worth of that good good.

how does one get into swans

Album Rating: 4.5

check To Be Kind it’s peak

what's the proper way to experience two hour albums

by listening to one hour Oxbow albums instead

points for brevity

Start with Filth because that's their best album anyway

Album Rating: 1.5

this first track is mostly ass

Album Rating: 1.5

boring 8 minutes, cool 6 minutes, boring 7 minutes. it's modern swans