A Little God In My Hands

 

A couple years ago, I came across a video of this bald man on youtube, also known as Anthony Fantano, the internet's busiest music nerd; giving this album a perfect score, so, the curious being that I am, especially when it comes to music, I felt the need to check it. Little did I know how important this record would become to me down the line.

A brief introduction to Swans first, they are an experimental noise and post-rock band formed in 1982 by the lead singer and multi-instrumentalist, mister Michael Gira. Swans are one of the most significant and influential bands in experimental music, the band's discography shows that in its prime the comfort zone was pretty roomy, if there was a genre or a style that was outside of the mainstream at the time, Swans had been mastering it: Noise, No wave, Industrial, Post-Punk, Post-Rock, gothic rock... basically hoe scaring music genres, the sound of Swans older albums like Holy Money and Filth is intense even by today's standards, although their sound got a little more accessible and poppier with records like The Burning World and White Light From the Mouth of Infinity.  But in 1996, Gira announced the band is breaking up after the release of their final album and their most acknowledged masterpiece Soundtrack For The Blind.

Thankfully, they would reunite 14 years later to release My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope, where they took a major shift and embraced the post-rock elements ditching their earlier sounds, but if anything Swans are known for it's never sticking to one genre or one idea in their music. The band has since released four more studio albums respectively in 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2019. and while the 2019 Leaving Meaning was a good record, I and many Swans fans find ourselves more interested and invested in the 2012/14/16 ones: The Seer, To Be Kind and The Glowing Man. so much so that everyone refers to them as a trilogy, considering how much similarities they have in common, whether it's the structure of the songs and the two hours runtime, the themes these albums delve into and how vaguely the lyrics can be interpreted, and of course, the crushing post-rock crescendos.

But the most intriguing part remains whether are these three albums connected or not? and if so, then how? Well to answer that I have a theory, well to be fair I didn't come up with it has been a theory floating on the internet for a while now but allow me to put it into my own words: after listening to the three records if you're paying any attention to the music you'll notice The Seer sounds quite medieval, The Glowing Man sounds quite spacy and meditative, spiritual and transcending even, on the other hand, To Be Kind sounds modern, with an instrumentation that is quite reminiscent of the late 90s to early 2000s heavy rock, the vocals too are much heavier and in your face when compared to the other two albums of the trilogy. this sound combined with the lyrical substance of the album all plays into the overarching theme of modernity: what we do, how we live, what do we fight for...

The opener track Screenshot almost confirms this theory with lyrics like Love, Child, reach, rise, sight, blind, steal, light, Mind, scar, clear, fire... that can be a list of everything we encounter in the present, or "Love! Now! Breathe! Now!", I don't know how much more present you can get from that lol. Another track that embraces this theory is Some things we do. the song literally is a list of numerous things we do in our daily lives we hunt, we hurt, we seize, we kneel, we heal, we fuck, we pray, we hate, we reach, we touch, we lose, we taste... How much more present can you be?

So the theory I came up with is the following: The Seer is the past, To be Kind is the present and The Glowing Man is the future. and these themes are shown sonically as I explained later, and lyrically as well, where we see that The Seer takes place in older times, with the birth of a beast on the first track Lunacy and other lines charged with medieval ages references and To Be Kind is more modern oriented and references modern subjects such as media. On The Glowing Man, things are a little more eyebrow-raising, mysterious, and strange really, but that's the point since the future is uncertain, and no one knows what will happen, this album plays around with the concept of serenity and peace in the afterlife and eventually the unavoidable death that awaits us with lines like Now the city's dissolving, and heaven's inhaling, as the trilogy ends on Finally, peace. 

To close this theory, I'd like to say the ways in which you interpret this trilogy are numerous, as I've seen some people online taking it as The ego, The subconscious self, and the spiritual self, some see the trilogy as Hell, Earth, and Heaven and others that see it as Beast, Man, and God and many others... this is just the perspective I'm leaning more into, I'm also happy that Gira also didn't confirm anything and left the listeners to have their own point of view.

Ok, now with the trilogy out of the way, I can finally write about every song in To Be Kind in a slightly detailed manner, it won't be boring I promise. that was lowkey a pointless promise since that if you've already made it this far you're more likely to complete the whole thing (and for that thank you dear reader) but anyways here we go.

the opener Screenshot, the track I owe my love for Post-Rock as it was probably the first song of that genre I would hear, that or the first one that interests me at least. It opens with this quiet hypnotic bassline with a sinister swing to it, then the drums pop in and they sound so crisp, so clean, and so damn satisfying that you'll start playing air drums with your hands before you even realize it, which is a situation that repeats itself constantly during the entirety of the record. The track just keeps building up and building up again, and that's really the formula Swans follow on every track here, a formula that's been crafted by bands like Goodspeed You! Black Emperor and Sigur-Ros and perfected by Swans on this album, where you would these repetitive riffs and build over them and over again with larger instrumentation every time that just gives way to this absolutely intense and rich climax, which, in the case of Screenshot is Gira shouting over this wall of noise Love now... Breathe now..., leaving you tattered and begging to be released from the grasp of sound while still enjoying every damn second of this torture. Following that, Just a little boy makes quite the moody and meditative entrance before the groove creeps along with more and more instruments swirling in your head, it's a strange hazy piece whose not only its lyrics picked my interest early on, but also how said lyrics are sung, they're not too highlighted, not in favor of the instruments anyways, they blend and fit perfectly with whatever is going on, and usually they're not the focal point of a track like you see normally where the whole song revolves around a certain chorus. Vocals on To Be Kind are treated as an instrument, probably unintentionally but that's what I'm getting when hearing the way Gira sings, as he engulfs you in whatever feeling or concept the song is trying to transfer.

Now I sleep in the belly of a woman

And I sleep in the belly of a man

And I sleep in the belly of rhythm

And I sleep in the belly of love

I sleep in the belly of oceans

I sleep in the belly of truth

I sleep in the belly of kindness

And I sleep in the belly of you

I'm Just a little boy

I'm not human

I need Love

Seemingly such a simple lyricism yet packed with feelings of mental anguish and being utterly lost, lyricism that can be interpreted in countless different ways, which is part of its beauty.

The next track A Little God In My Hands takes the groovy nature of Screenshot and alter it to be significantly better, with these tinkling piano notes and a blaring trombone as Gira's vocals that makes the track not one of the catchiest Swans tracks but also one of the most head-scratching ones since no fan has yet decrypted what the demonic backing vocals right around the end exactly say:

- Some God, Some little monster God

- Summon, Summon the monster God

- So far, so many miles so far

those are just a few of the many guesses I've seen fans online come up with to answer that question, but the option of it being just meaningless gibberish is not really off the table, remember what I said about Swans using vocals as an instrument, well that can very well be the case here, especially when taking in count that those vocals come as a part of the big build-up towards the end climax. We'll never truly know about it but hey it's fun to speculate on things like this.
The behemoth  Bring The Sun / Toussaint L'ouverture comes next, hogging an entire quarter of the album's runtime that strangely feels much shorter. In the first few minutes, the listener is thrown into this loop of booming drums that plants an unease in the heart, then it gets quieter but with enough tension to stay unsettling, eventually going to another build-up as the drums come back crispier in following Gira's vocals, then it only gets more unstable and more ear-grabbing with so many sounds crashing into each other as new instruments keep creeping as the track gets faster and faster, creating this... well the only word fitting to describe it is majestic, so, creating this majestic sound climax that no ears can get enough of, truly the most based and superb passage I've heard in a music piece before.

funny enough, my favorite moment on the album is juxtaposed with my least favorite, as the second half sees the sound taking a more ambient nature that you can easily mistake it for a movie score, it's still a good section nonetheless it just doesn't hit half the highs the first section had.

And finally, to close off disc one of the album, we have Some things we do, which despite not having any crazy crescendos similar to the other tracks, is significantly important, it's the equivalent of a gas stop where you would have to rest and recharge your ears before going on that journey of intense build-ups, cause despite how great the album, two hours of grasping sounds is a little too much, Some things we do is the rest we need.

She loves us kicks off the second disc, operating in a similar manner to a little God in my hands where they both juxtapose these mesmerizing and spiritualistic vocals with a post-punk style bass rhythm before diving into another one of those soul-crushing build-ups, with Gira this time yelling the following lines:

I am your son

I am your girl

Come to my house

Come to my tongue

Come to my lung

Mau Mau Mau Mau

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck

Your name is fuck

Your name is fuck

which again, are vague lyrics that can be interpreted in numerous ways, the word Mau means sun in Egyptian, which makes total sense here given this isn't the first time really Swans play around with the concept of the sun and associate it with different images of destructive thoughts and behaviors, even to God and the devil, whether it is on other tracks on this album in particular (Bring the Sun) or in older records (I am the Sun, Song for the sun...). and maybe Gira is speaking to the sun in this track but what's boggling me is why would he name her Fuck? In another narrative, this could be a commentary on the way that men, or society in general, sees women as an object for sex and pleasure, but the true meaning behind them remains a mystery only Mr. Gira can solve. Next, we have the gorgeous Kirsten Supine which provides a more sorrowful and meditative take, almost like a slightly disturbing song by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the track also engulfs one of if not the most beautiful poetic passages on the entire record making it the closest this album gets to be sincerely touching. I do believe it would work sonically better as part of The Glowing Man's tracklist but hey still a mesmerizing song, in Swans terms of course, in normal terms, still considered as hoe scaring music

the following track Oxygen sees Swans picking up their unsettling sound, this time packed with a harsh groove and some of Gira's most whacked-out vocals, and uneven drum patterns, oh, by the way, did I mention how fucking good the drums sound? oh yeah of course I did, but just in case, they sound fucking amazing, not only on Oxygen but on every fucking song here. I'm running out of words at this moment, I used every adjective I could think of to describe the previous climaxes that I can't for the life of me come up with new words to talk about this one, which ironically enough, is probably the best one? Not so sure about that, but hey, it's amazing I don't care...

Natalie Heal, that as much as it sounds spiritual, it really isn't. not after the first few minutes of the chime jangling piano keys anyways, the funny thing is despite that you know exactly what they would do at this point, which is adding layers of different instrumentations, crispy drums, shredding guitars and crazed vocals, they still manage to blow you out the water each and every fucking time, you'd think you'll be bored around the third or fourth build-up but no, we're only going higher from here, and that is the reason that forced me to feel nothing but love and respect towards Swans.

And finally, to close things off, the title track To Be Kind, which strangely, is a relatively calm and meditative track for the most part, except for the last minute when a storm of drums, guitars, synths, and all kinds of the instrument takes place rearing into the ears of the listener, creating a high tension before vanishing in the abyss again, what a way to end this experience. yes, it's not an album at this point, it's an experience.

Ps: did I mention that the drums sound amazing?????