Swans are reaching the final leg of an extensive tour in support of their towering The Seer LP from last year. However, they’re not playing any of the songs from it. We caught up with leader Michael Gira during a break in the tour to discuss his relentless need to move forward and trying to find an endless rhythm.
The decision to continue under the name of Swans is obviously a very deliberate one. What are the connecting threads between Swans of the early 80s and Swans of 2013?
Well, I don’t know about the early 80s, but Swans existed from 1981 until 1997 or 1998, so there was a lot of different kinds of music made during the course of Swans, but I suppose the connecting thread – probably to the latter stuff on Soundtracks for the Blind and the live album Swans are Dead – is the kind of cascading, overwhelming sounds in which one hopefully can lose oneself and find some bliss.
So your goals with making music back then are essentially the same as they are now?
I think they’re more refined now. This version of Swans now – well, I’m not a critic so I can’t say – but for me, it’s the best experience that Swans has ever provided and elicits bliss for all concerned.
Yes, with your current band it seems to be a very sort of self-contained thing, you work together so well, that it almost wouldn’t matter whether there were other people listening to it or not. Do you get the same satisfaction from just playing in a practice room as you would from playing in front of an audience?
No, the energy’s different, of course. I’ve come to realise that in a way the audience is participating, not in the sense that we’re trying to please them or something, but them being there and receiving the kind of vortex that we’re all inside of – it just makes for a really high experience. You know, it’s rock music, and I’m not trying to be overly ambitious here, but it just feels great when it’s working, and that’s kind of the goal. There’s a lot of improvisation live; maybe not in the “normal” sense where people are noodling and doing their own thing, but it’s more that we’re finding the thread inside the sound, and finding new ways to push the sound. There’s a group that I feel an affinity for, although they don’t really make the same kind of music, but having seen them play several times now I think they’re absolutely tremendous. They’re from Australia and they’re called The Necks, have you ever seen them play?
Yeah, I’ve seen them play twice, they’re amazing.
Yeah, I just think they’re awesome. So, it’s a similar thing, where it’s kind of just creating itself simultaneously – and they’re jazz guys, right?
Yeah.
not like, in the sense of soloing, they’re just making these waves of sound. In their case, with incredibly limited means, it’s pretty awesome.
Yeah, it’s always really interesting to see it come together … I guess with The Necks it’s all strictly improvised.
Yeah, they just start from one guy just playing something. With us, we have routines, or basic songs, they grow within themselves, so every night they expand and change. Right now the material we’re playing live is mostly unrecorded material which will be on the next album. We don’t play much from even The Seer. We play one song from the 80s called Coward. Other than that we just play a little bit of the song The Seer and then that bleeds into other things that have developed live.
So was it a case of when you put out The Seer that you almost instantly got sick of playing the songs?
Well, it’s just… once an album’s done I don’t want to try and recreate it on stage, I think that’s kind of silly. So the songs that seemed to work and that could still be open-ended we did live, and we’ve eventually jettisoned the other ones we used to do live, except for that piece of ‘The Seer’, like I said. I just have a need to make new material and be inside something that feels vital and in the moment.
Is the new material roughly in the same vein as The Seer?
Yeah, I guess. I don’t know. Some of it’s entirely without rhythm. Or without a groove. It’s just swelling, heavy sounds. It’s like expressionist music. Other things have a really intentional groove, and we’re still trying to find our path in that way. And I’m not talking about white boys playing funk or something – it’s just finding a rhythm that just feels like it could go on forever, and hopefully will.
When The Seer came out, a lot of people were claiming it to be this milestone recording, I guess you said yourself that it was this culmination of 30 years of work…
Well, maybe it’s more like a millstone around my neck [laughs].
Oh, really?
It’s just, you know, I’m an artist so when I’m making something I’m completely subsumed in it, and want to make something that’s the best I can possibly do and that, in the case of a record, provides a kind of cinematic experience and something you can lose yourself in. That’s the ambition anyway. But then after spending hundreds and hundreds of hours on the thing, I’m pretty obsessive with overdubs and orchestration and editing and mixing, to me then it’s just ones and zeroes basically. And I just move on. I don’t look at any song as being finished anymore at all. It has so many different versions, possibilities, that wherever it’s caught is fine, but I just want to keep moving forward.
You’re not worried about running the risk of disappointing people or something…
The exact opposite seems to be case. We’ve had the best responses that I’ve ever experienced with this version of Swans, particularly in the last year. But, you know, we’re not a pop group, so we’re not gonna go out and try and sell our album, which nobody buys anymore, by the way [laughs]. I think it’s just important to try to make an experience happen that makes the moment feel magical and that you’re really intensely alive.
Swans play The Button Factory on the 15th of August with support from the excellent Josephine Foster. The show is presented by U:mack and tickets are available from tickets.ie priced €24.
