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http://www.scaruffi.com/vol4/swans.html#see
>Needless to say, the very same critics and publications that ignored the Swans when they were releasing one masterpiece after the other hailed this mediocre senile work as a masterpiece 30 years later, finding all sorts of hidden meanings in what was simply an astute sellout.
| >> | No.36409702
>>36405718
Here's the actual review
Part 1/2
>30 years after the Swans gave their first masterpiece the good news was that the world had finally caught up and by 2013 the Swans were widely recognized as one of the greatest rock bands ever. The bad news is that it was time for Gira to monetize the name that had yielded no commercial return for so long. Hence the double album The Seer (Young God, 2012) that begins with the frigid bolero crescendo and Pink Floyd-ian litany of Lunacy (with Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker of Low) and ends with the Doors-ian blues-jazz shuffle of The Apostate, which blossoms after a lengthy preamble of sentimental guitar glissandoes and a manic collective explosion a` la Glenn Branca.
For a two-hour album, there are precious few ideas, and they are mostly (very) antiquated, bordering on the ridiculous when they borrow Sonic Youth-ian guitar repetition for the ten-minute Mother of the World and when they indulge in the free-jazz jamming of 93 Ave B Blues, or when a loop of tolling bells can't do more than trigger a monotonous litany in the eight-minute Avatar. Jarboe appears on the 19-minute Piece of the Sky, at first an effective piece of cosmic music until the drums kicked in and turns it into a slow languid aimless sleep-inducing coda, and yet another repetitive section.
The 32-minute The Seer begins promising with hysterically strummed guitars (Glenn Branca again) and early Pink Floyd-ian suspense, and peaks when Gira pits mantra-like vocal repetition against country and western drumming, but the remaining 15 minutes are awfully pointless. The Seer Returns employs Roger Waters' strategy of revisiting a theme in a different tone (hence memories of The Wall), and pushing it to an obsessive degree, reminiscent of Led Zeppelin's When The Levee Breaks Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, does cause shivers of primordial shamanic hypnosis.
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| >> | No.36409725
>>36409702
>>36405718
Part 2/2
>There is one touching ballad, Song for a Warrior, sung by Yeah Yeah Yeahs' vocalist Karen O, that is the exact opposite of the lengthy compositions and that for a couple of minutes matches the romantic intensity of, say, Gram Parsons' version of Love Hurts.
Song for a Warrior, The Apostate and The Seer Returns (and half of Piece of the Sky and one third of The Seer) deserved to be recorded, but the rest perhaps could have be edited away. Anyway, this album has virtually nothing of the sound of the Swans. It should have been credited to Gira or to one of his many side-projects.
>Needless to say, the very same critics and publications that ignored the Swans when they were releasing one masterpiece after the other hailed this mediocre senile work as a masterpiece 30 years later, finding all sorts of hidden meanings in what was simply an astute sellout.
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