If you’re ever in need for things to ponder, read Michael Gira’s lyrics sometime.

The characters in Swans’ songs will con you into selling your soul for a glimpse into heaven. The words slither around each other like vermin. The characters mock you for looking at their nakedness. More often, they’ll dare you to look at the narrator, be his friend, trust and believe him, and roll the dice to see if you too will end up one of the many unlucky suckers he brags about having murdered.

It’s a world that’s hard to pull yourself out of if you get sucked down into too far.  There’s something paradoxical about subjecting yourself to Swans, because though the lyrics throw horrifying images at you that you can’t un-see, the beauty of the music also plays a focal role. It’s both majestic as well as profane.

Most of the themes in Swans’ newest album, My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, are not pleasant. Liars, self-deception, enslavement, betrayal– I won’t go too deep into examples here– not to be a tease, but because I probably couldn’t do them as much justice as Swans’ singer, lyricist, and LEAD GERMANIC PRESENCE, Michael Gira.  And since you’d probably want fair warning anyway, I don’t think it’s really all that necessary for me regurgitate what someone else has already done better. You’d need to brace yourself, and you’d end up blaming me for fucking up the effect.

Fair warning is not what you’re supposed get with the Swans; it’s not music to ignore if you want to take it on its terms.  It’s best to listen to while putting yourself into the seedy attitudes of the ones telling the stories.  You have a choice to stand at a distance and watch the spectacle, or you can try to see what the spectacle sees.

Some of the most disturbing things I have ever thought about, were ideas I read in Michael Gira’s book, The Consumer, a collection of his short stories.  I’d read the Cities of the Red Night trilogy by William S. Burroughs when I was seventeen years old, and my literary innocence has been more or less ruined ever since by all the truly perverted and truly fucked-up things described in those three novels. By comparison, the situations described in The Consumer were even harder to deal with.  I’ve always thought of Mr. Gira as a master of exploring the unconscious shittiness of the human mind.  I really can’t think of many people who will go that far with their imagination, which is why I really like the Swans.  Can’t argue with results!

In My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, you are forced to either miss out on the fun, or join in and participate.  You can’t toe the line though, the music is too extreme, and if for some reason you are able to toe a line this fragile, you probably don’t even need the Swans at all on your path.  If so:  great, good, have a cigar.  But do keep in mind that not all of us are so effortlessly on top of ourselves.

The album’s eight songs operate with urgency and world-weariness.  Horror is one thing; psychedelia is another.  There are no psychoses present in this disc. Just a free-flowing, day-cruise through the real horrors of life, and the ghostly beauties of life those horrors awaken.

Example: some people cringe when they hear the word “piss” in an otherwise pretty album.  You hear the word “piss” in this album, but on the other hand, sometimes you hear that word on the street, too.  You put piss in a hurricane, and it’s swirling around with the roses, but it doesn’t mean it’s all shit.  Step back and take a gander.

Swans swim in black waters, but they’re not fumbling around in the darkness they inhabit.  Put yourself in this pool and see how long you last.  Indulge what it’s like from their eyes.

One of the things I’ve always been unable to wrap my brain around when I listen to Swans is the question, “What does the singer see that I don’t?”  I say that because I’m a youngin’, and I’ve got a lot of questions in general.

I leave this particular question open, though.  I sit there and let it invade the space for a while.  For fuck’s sake you can always turn off the stereo if it ever gets too heavy!

I don’t care about answers with this album. The way I see it, at the end of the day this isn’t my baby to spank. It’s plenty meaningful enough for me just to watch the lumbering juggernaut bowl slowly down Main Street, crushing skulls on its way. People moving too slowly to escape, mesmerized by the silver bells and shiny jangles, horrified by the thought of some colossal onyx monster getting fatter, prouder, stronger, and meaner.

Not a lot of people listen to Swans’ albums if, let’s say, considered side by side with the throngs of folks who buy Blink-182 cds.  I imagine plenty of people don’t go very far down into the hole; it’s just too much for you unless you’re so inclined, but, if you are so inclined, you surely find in the Swans what you’re looking for.

It’s a curse: if you turn attention away from Swans’ lyrical and sonic subjects, it could all backfire.  Part of the spiritual danger of delving into a world this dark, is that if and when you’ve found what you were looking for, got your wish, you could always get complacent, and turn your back on the prize long after it was already too late to turn back.  Scorned, the prize eats you alive.

(Or maybe the prize has long since been plundered.)

I’m not the only one that accepts the Swans’ mythology as being larger than life. Not by a long shot, they’re a heavy band for their fans. A deeply personal experience which some people won’t let go.

Like a leech, it sucks itself onto you and won’t let you go.  Then the parasite assimilates itself to the host, and by that point it’s tricky indeed, to get rid of.

You’ve got to muster up the strength. Pull out some good books, and get down to brass tacks.

Then again, you could always weigh your options, and decide not to fight it anymore. Accept it as a secret part of every true human being. A lurker you’ve gotten to know, examine. Keep your feelings your own, and know where you stand, so you can sympathize with the tragic fate of the sad cannibal in safety, knowing so many just don’t want to approach something so bleak, and knowing it’s not bleak but maybe just beat.

You want to be beaten too, but not quite yet.

-B.Whisenhunt, 23 January 2011