Swans – The Beggar
Swans continue to tone back the aggression on The Beggar, feeling like a band once again developing a new identity, one that’s still coalescing into its full shape
In the more-than-40 years since Michael Gira formed Swans their sonic developments and shifting personnel has meant a catalogue easily divisible into notable eras. Still in the early stages of a new era for the group, The Beggar feels like a band once again developing a new identity, one that’s still coalescing into its full shape.
The Beggar continues the group's drift that began with 2019's Leaving Meaning, away from the squalling noise and battering grooves of The Seer and To Be Kind, and into something slightly gentler, the defining mood being closer to the spectral yet tense folk rock of Gira’s Angels of Light work. The likes of lead single Paradise is Mine and Why Can't I Have What I Want Any Time That I Want? work brilliantly well in this fashion.
They use the same one riff principle Swans have carried through their whole career, but allow them to balm rather than pummel, creating this sly slinkiness whilst maintaining enough growling atonality in the mix to remind you who you’re dealing with. There is an issue with some of the tracks that are more song oriented, as in the case of Unforming in which they don’t quite coalesce into anything much, and hammer home how Gira’s voice has always felt more suited to chant and repetition than strict melody.
That said, the record's closing double of The Beggar Lover (Three) and The Memorious are classic Swans. The former is a 40-minute opus of mounting tension, bolted together from the essential Swans ingredients of ominous drone, toxic Americana and needling electronics. However it presents a new approach, more loose in its assembly than the precision-engineered 20-minute-plus tracks they’ve put out in the last decade, veering between atmospheres with a sense of play one doesn’t readily associate with Swans. The latter is their trademark one idea done with increasing intensity until the whole thing sounds like it's going to buckle apart.
The Beggar is another solid entry into the Swans canon, if not one that suggests it will have the staying power of their classics. It still marks Swans as a group intent on developing long into their career, and there’s no threat of them losing their intensity.
Listen to: Paradise is Mine, The Memorious, Why Can't I Have What I Want Any Time That I Want?