Photo: Richard Gray
Guitarist Norman Westberg and lap steel player Kristof Hahn are chewing, as befits their goatees, when Swans arrive on stage, and stare out implacably at the audience. Assembly Hall staff are handing out earplugs. You've been told Swans are playing for two and a half hours and you wonder if you should have brought some sustenance yourself. You know they're going to be loud, very loud but, after reforming the group in 2010, frontman Michael Gira has said that he has "glimpsed the infinite" in the making of 2016's The Glowing Man, of something that is bigger than each of us, like the "beauty and majesty" of swans themselves, in spite of their "ugly temperaments". You hold onto this promise and brace yourself as they begin.
Swans is not a conventional gig and it's difficult to write about them in a conventional way. Their albums take you to dark and uncomfortable places. Gira looks like Gary Oldman in Coppola's Dracula and the relentless drone of the fifty minute first song seems to feel the air with whispering, spirit voices and a teeming invasion of insectoids.
However the unsettling effect is almost overturned when Gira's portentous vocals come in. They seem comic and unintentionally parodic rather than genuinely chilling. It is on the shorter, punchier numbers, where he sounds like a cross between Neil Tennant and Pete Murphy, that he excels.
And yet, after an hour of droning soundscape and pulverising chords, this industrial raga starts to invade your body and even Gira's voice begins to soar. It feels like the band has turned up the volume, but perhaps it's just the cumulative effect of so much intensity. Your uvula has been a punchbag being pummelled by a boxer with the hand speed of Amir Khan and then, suddenly, the music uproots you and you're swirling in it, in a solution of formaldehyde. You feel there are children running wild in your chest, doves beating their wings in your shoulders. It's like nothing else in the world of rock. You are bludgeoned into the transcendental, while your ears are ringing in drowned protest.
There is material from all of the last three albums, The Seer, To Be Kind and the final recording from the group in its current form, The Glowing Man. Gira doesn't venture into the band's catalogue of the eighties and nineties. At the end of the day, though, the set list is irrelevant. Swans are simply to be experienced. Like reading a large novel seeing them is an undertaking. There are periods of boredom, and sometimes you might need to take a breather, but persevere, return. Your teeth will hum like tuning forks. You'll feel utterly disorientated.You may even start to feel ill, but, ultimately, it's worth it.
