Swans, My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky

Posted on 28th Sep 10 by Jonathan Keane | 2

What words spring to mind when Swans are mentioned? Fascinating and incendiary may be some of them. Maybe divisive too, but more often than not – celebrated. It’s been 14 long years since this assemblage of rousing and evocative oddballs have delivered some new music. While it’s not a classic line-up reunion, depending on what your favourite Swans record is, it still has of course, their architect in Michael Gira. He’s accompanied by Norman Westber, Christoph Hahn, Chris Pravdica, Thor Harris and Phil Puleo.

Swans, My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky

My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky is for all intents and purposes, a strong Swans record. It has many of the noise and avant-garde eccentricities that made them such a formidable force to begin with.

Across nine minutes album instigator No Worlds/No Thoughts ambles with Swans’ classic cacophony. Michael Gira’s voice hasn’t missed a step. It’s more than a beautiful moment to welcome back this enigma and the Swans name. Gira’s other project Angels Of Light may have sated appetites somewhat but with this opening salvo a hefty mission statement is made – Swans are back.

From there to closer Little Mouth, My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky is lusciously poignant but also anguished.

Furthermore there are tracks like the insolently titled You Fucking People Make Me Sick which hark back so strongly to what made Swans such an abrasive and belligerent act. Yet this particular song is creeping and hauntingly mellow. It’s proof of how they’ve also effectively blurred the many lines that once existed between elegant beauty and unruly aggression.

Eden Prison though is the valiant standout of the record; heaving riffs collide with Gira’s death defying croon to create a menacing and looming aura. It feeds into Little Mouth which has an inescapable lonesome barstool quality to it.

The only fault and it’s a miniscule one, to this record is that it preaches to the converted. It would be the wrong entry point for someone new to Swans, but as for the seasoned fan that lapped up Cop and The Great Annihilator, for them this may very well be album of the year.

But from this vantage it’s another solid, possibly even spectacular, record in a year that certainly hasn’t been lacking in any of them.

Drop-d Rating: 7/10

Swans

Tags: Chris Pravdica, Christoph Hahn, Cop, Michael Gira, My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky, Norman Westber, Phil Puleo, Swans, The Great Annihilator, Thor Harris