What a perfect way to usher in the month of March. If memory serves, the last time I saw Swans was in 1997, right before they originally called it a day. I’ve seen bandleader Michael Gira a few times since then, both solo and with his interim band Angels of Light, but there is a very marked difference between those gigs and a Swans gig, so my excitement level was pretty high as we followed the red river of brake lights northward to San Francisco.
I hadn’t yet been to the Regency Ballroom, located on Van Ness Avenue around the corner from The Great American Music Hall. It turned out to be perhaps a little bigger than the Great American, and with more of an auditorium venue vibe amongst the staff and in the general layout. There were overpriced bars (being non-alcoholic in my habits, I can only comment on the prices of soda and water - $4.00!), crowded bathrooms, and lots of marble tiling. We spotted Greg upstairs and ascended to try and sneak up on him, only to discover that members of the Regency staff frown on people swinging on the railings. Ninja attack foiled. The seats on the balcony being quite comfortable, we decided to stay put and enjoy the novelty of experiencing the show from a seated position. The seats to our left quickly filled in with more people I knew, as did the floor below. It put me in mind of a phenomenon that was originally confined to Motorhead gigs – that of knowing or at least recognizing a large percentage of the crowd. Swans, like Motorhead, are iconic enough to bring even the most trogladytic of fans out of their caves and into the wintery light. Strangely enough, the phenomenon wasn’t observed at the most recent Motorhead gig. Swans have usurped the power of attraction from them.
Wooden Wand were up first, and started a minute early by my watch. The name was previously familiar to me, but the only disc of theirs in my collection is the Folklore of the Moon 3” CD released a number of years ago by TiMOTHy Renner’s label, Hand/Eye. In fact, I reviewed that release early in the history of this blog, way back in 2006. Truth be told, as I mentioned in the review, I was a bit underwhelmed by it. I was still interested to see them perform though, since a lot can change in 5 years. Indeed, as it turns out, the music of that long ago cdr and the music performed tonight could well have been two completely different bands, not to mention different genres. For this performance, Wooden Wand was bandleader James Jackson Toth and two additional guitarists – William Tyler and one other whose name unfortunately escapes me. The music ranged from folk to country and blues and included a John Prine cover. Toth’s voice was very suited to the music, and the mix was crystal clear. My favorite songs were Hotel Bar and The Mountain. Toth played the last song, called The Resuscitation Dance (if memory serves), solo, mentioning that it would be on a yet to be recorded new album.
There was a bit of a wait between bands, but eventually an insistent drone crept in under the conversations and obligatory background music, subtly signaling the start of the Swans set. The blue stage lights came on, bathing the audience in a cold glow. On the floor below us, potheads sent up isolated smoke signals which stood out like blue columns under the lights. Conversation dwindled. Percussionist Bill Puleo arrived on stage and began producing a wall of dulcimer noise. He was soon joined by Thor Harris on chimes. One by one, the other band members arrived – Norman Westberg on guitar, Christoph Hahn on lap steel guitar, Chris Pravdica on bass, and finally a be-hatted Michael Gira on guitar. Gira quickly doffed his fancy hat and got down to the epic business of producing tectonic slabs of noise. The song proved to be a version of new album opener No Words/No Thoughts, played in almost geological time, with isolated events of fury cropping up here and there like volcanoes. What followed was a cathartic set which in its entirety lasted around 2 hours and 15 minutes. Most of the songs were from the newest CD, “My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky”. Of the new songs, Eden Prison stands out as one of my favorites. I also recognized Jim, and Little Mouth, the latter being the one song encore. From the extensive back catalog, Gira pulled out and dusted off I Crawled from the “Young God” EP, which was originally released way back in 1984, and tonight glowed with revitalized light, fitting seamlessly into a set primarily composed of new songs. Sex, God, Sex, from the 1987 “Children of God” release, made an appearance in severely altered form, with at one point Gira singing a capella in his forceful baritone, sounding like a preacher on a precipice at the end of the world. I noticed a few more instances of this throughout the set – Gira spilling out lyrics into the silence – the silence of a pause between breaths of a juggernaut. A new song called Avatar was also played, if my informational foray into the wilderness of the web has steered me correctly.
The musicianship was impressive, and I especially enjoyed the moments of frenzied drumming by Puleo and Harris - their precision and boundless energy was breathtaking. We were even treated to a bit of harmonica and jaw harp, with Gira’s harmonica playing sounding like the labored breathing of a machine, and Pravdica’s jaw harp providing a quiet counterpoint to the sonic intensity of the rest of the set. At times, Gira played conductor, using hand motions to pull the rest of the band along with him. Actually, he often used his whole body, leaving the stage alltogether before slamming back down. In one of my (rather poor) photos, it almost looks as if he's stomping on his hat. The band’s energy almost seemed directed inwards, because despite Gira’s insistence that the lights be trained on the audience so he could see them at all times, he spent a lot of time facing away, as did most of the other band members, making them seem like a secret cabal of sonic wizards, brewing up a storm to unleash on the unwary. How to describe the elongated stretches of slowly building tension and the inevitable sonic release that follows? Imagine being strapped to the fuselage of a jet as the engines spool up. The tension builds as you twist your head to look down the runway, wondering when the moment of acceleration is going to happen. Then the acceleration hits you, turning your face to rubbery ripples as you rip through the still air and the ground recedes beneath you. Then time flows in reverse, and you do it again… again and again. Swans are all about tension and crescendo, with one bleeding into the other to form a seamless night of uncomfortable sound. But what a blissful discomfort it is!
When we emerged into the night, it was raining gently, like calm after a storm. Quite fitting.
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