Review Summary: Swans is live material
You know, just like almost every Swans record, The Beggar gives you long orchestral tracks with a lot of space for imagination. Screeches, pops and bangs, random drum parts, Michael Gira's humming, female vocals, this album is full of this. Unfortunately I'm not the guy to sort of see the full image and I got bored very easily. Shorter tracks are what I like the most here, such as Michael is Done, No More of This and Ebbing.
When I first listened to The Beggar, first week after its release, I was really pleased how the record presented itself. 2 hours of something that I will never experience live. I was thinking very positive, until decided to give it a proper listen yesterday. The re-listen gave me a bit more understanding of the album and I can clearly say I am not the fan of it. The aforementioned 3 tracks are great, but everything else is emphasizing gothic church singing. As the listed genre states, the album feels like a collage of sounds, that, despite being merged and produced properly, do not make me feel appreciative since they do not excite me, there's not much going on.
However, you can't not mention the amazing guitar and percussion this record has. In the late part of The Beggar Lover (Three) you can hear a very jazz-like bass line repeated for some time, followed by Gira's singing (my favourite part of the track).
As usual, Swans brought us yet another inspirational, sound-massive record that I think would be lovely to hear in live.
