Review Summary: To be fair...
Before any of this goes further and hardcore Swans fans jump to the conclusion “this guy just doesn’t get it” I want to make a few things clear. Or one thing, to be precise. To me, the rating of this album is not 4.0 or 5.0 not because it’s too long or repetitive. This is Swans here. Hating them because the songs are around 30 minutes in length and the instruments are playing the same few notes over and over again is like hating Elvis Presley for singing rock’n’roll songs. Rock’n’roll is what Elvis did and droning lengthy compositions comprised of hypnotic repetition of the same musical phrases is what Swans do (now, apparently). If you just don’t like that type of music then there is probably not much of constructive criticism you can offer because it’s just not your thing. Putting it simply, if you didn’t understand and like “The Seer”, you won’t understand or like “To Be Kind” as well.
I don’t find this album stellar because I liked “The Seer”. It took me some time to understand it but once I did it proved to be an extremely rewarding listen. Atmospheric, grandiose, dark and menacing, this record showed the band use an interesting combination of traditional rock instrumentation, exotic percussion and sometimes brass sections to create a sonic equivalent of a journey to Hell and back. It didn’t sound like anything Swans had done before and proved that Gira and company still had the vision and the sense of style that made them into living legends.
“To Be Kind”, though, sees Swans using the same bag of tricks and apparently trying to create something very similar.
When reviewing an album of a band with a long career-span context means a great deal. Most Swans fans would agree that “Children Of God”, “White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity” and “Soundtracks For The Blind” are the band’s best efforts. It is worth noting that all of those records have completely different atmospheres. Of course, they bear some characteristic traits that make Swans what they are but the elements that the band combines are very different in all three of the aforementioned albums. And so are the results: “Children Of God” is crushingly dark, “White Light” is spiritual and almost uplifting at times, “Soundtracks” is mind-twisting and melancholic.
“To Be Kind” would’ve been a masterpiece had not “The Seer” being released before it. The same elements that comprised some of the finest moments of the previous record are reused here in a very similar fashion. A vivid example of this is “Bring The Sun – Toussaint L’Ouverture”. It’s basically “The Seer mark 2”. That is not to say the track is bad – it’s epic, huge, atmospheric and hypnotic – but so was the title track of “The Seer”. And the instrumentation and the overall sound a fairly similar.
To be fair, though, it’s not all about repeating the formula from two years ago. The general feel of ‘To Be Kind” is punchier, more energized and more… human, should I say. There is less mystique surrounding this record and more immediate action (case in point – the spastic and neurotic “Oxygen”), which is a welcomed addition. But still, I can not shake the feeling that little progression has been made.
“To Be Kind” is not a bad album. Actually, it’s very, very good. Everything that Swans perfected over the last few years is showcased here in the best way possible. It’s just that for a band that has changed and evolved so much and made so many diverse but equally fantastic records, self-repetition seems like a bit of a drawback.
