Swans songs

A farewell tour for sonic sculptors

by Matt Ashare

"A lot of people have the misconception that the Swans have always been dark, negative, and loud," muses bandleader Michael Gira on the eve of the group's farewell tour, which comes to the Somerville Theatre a week from Saturday. "They also think probably that Michael Gira is an asshole, which is probably true. I was an erupting cauldron of violence -- hallucinatory violence -- in the early days, and I managed to make enough enemies to last a lifetime. I guess I was pretty good at insulting people."

It's been 15 years since Gira formed Swans in NYC's Lower East Side, adding his bleak, aggression-addled sensibility to the emerging scene of post-punk, no-wave, avant-rock outfits like Lydia Lunch's 8 Eyed Spy, Jim Thirwell's Foetus, Live Skull, and Sonic Youth. Inspired, it seemed, by a fiercely masochistic muse, Gira went on to lead a rotating line-up of Swans recruits through some of the most sadistic, assaultive, and -- unfortunately -- humorless music around.

You could easily cite a Swans single like 1986's "The Screw," a brutal sexual scenario set to a treacherously deconstructed disco beat, as hard evidence that Gira was simply ahead of his time, a black-souled pioneer in the gothic-industrial horror-rock realm that Trent Reznor would eventually lord over. Reznor screaming "I want to fuck you like an animal" is bubblegum compared to Gira's growled, basso profundo orders to "push your ass up/Move around/Cry/Open your mouth/Here is your money." But even Gira recognizes that his naked savagery is a much more difficult taste to acquire than Reznor's danceable macabre.

"I used to delude myself into thinking that we could be extremely popular," admits Gira, who now lives in Atlanta. "Looking back on it, I realize there's no way that could possibly have happened."

The engaging quality that Gira's material lacked on disc has, over the years, been more than made up for by the band's legendary, sometimes confrontational, sometimes self-absorbed, but always earth-rattlingly loud live shows. The giant, churning, molten mass of bass, guitar, drums plus Jarboe's keyboard samples that Swans generated as recently as 1991 offered a convincing lesson in the liberating power of volume and density. "I used volume as a way to become transported by the music," Gira reflects. "The sheer physicality of it was so enthralling. It just felt good."

Swans have also developed a quieter, more reflective side since 1985, when Gira's longtime companion Jarboe joined the group as the only other steady member. Her stark, gothic, torch-song sensibility has often been drowned out by the band's noise tantrums, but Gira has met her halfway with his own morbid brand of acoustic guitar-based death folk and an increasing interest in unsettling ambient experiments with tape loops and instrumental compositions. Gira's intention to explore those outlets more fully -- as he does on Swans' final release, the epic two-disc, 140-minute Soundtracks for the Blind (Atavistic) -- is a major reason he's decided to retire the band moniker.

"I always thought I could keep the name Swans as sort of a corporate moniker and do whatever I wanted musically. My main inspirations, in terms of using a band to do a lot of different things, were bands like the Beatles, particularly `The White Album,' and the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd in their early days. They would do real raucous songs, acoustic songs, and experimental stuff. But I've found over the past four or five years that I've been butting my head up against a brick wall of preconceptions."

After the tour (on which Gira and Jarboe will be backed by former Cop Shoot Cop drummer Phil Puleo, Congo Norvell bassist Bill Bronson, and guitarist Clinton Steel), Gira is planning to re-release the entire Swans back catalogue in four double-CD packages on his Young God label. He'll continue making new music as the Body Lovers, an outlet for "CD-length tracks of permutating, shifting, electronically mutilated sounds," and as the Pleasure Seekers, who will feature "quiet, acoustic music centered on long narrative songs." For Gira, it's simply the end of an arduous chapter. "Swans is 15 years of my life, a lot of work and pain, and some joy. I have trouble defining it any more than that because I've spent most of that time struggling not to be defined. I'm just a simple drinking man."

Swans' final tour comes to the Somerville Theatre next Saturday, January 25. Low open. Call 536-2100 for info.