“You guys brought earplugs, right?”
Although I gravitate towards, and certainly cover, a lot of heavy and angry music, my tastes are more eclectic than I let on. It’s a bit of a mood thing for me, as I’m sure it is for many, and believe it or not, but my moods fluctuate rather wildly. I may not be the picture of poly-jamorous, but I’m just as comfortable listening to avant-jazz as I am death metal. So, it might be surprising to learn that I have never seen Swans before. I’ve listened to them on and off for years and even been ridiculed by my more obsessive peers for never having made it to one of their performances, so when the opportunity finally lined up, I pressed that go button.
Before I get to it, though, let’s talk about the special opening performance by Little Annie and Paul Walfisch. Apart from the connection to Swans in Walfisch, I was oblivious to Little Annie’s musical history until I decided to go ahead and do a bit of research and discovered that her early forays into music were during the explosion of anarcho music in England under the moniker Annie Anxiety, performing a form of poetic pop music for Crass Records. While time has not been the kindest to her voice, she and Walfisch performed a set of minimalist alternative jazz, eliciting an honest emotional outpour like Leonard Cohen. One of the highlights of their set was a lovely cover of Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day,” but the real charm was Annie’s unabashed enthusiasm and professions of love for the audience.
It’s probably been said before, but Swans are truly a force of nature. During the initial instrument and sound check, longtime collaborator and lap steel master, Kristof Hahn, took a moment to regard the front row and asked, “You guys brought earplugs, right?” Not ominous, or even intentionally humorous, but honest, because it was going to be loud. Upon returning to the stage, Michael Gira led the band, acoustic guitar in hand, from a swivel stool through the opening number, crescendoing louder and louder into an explosion of sound and melody, creating a trance-like state among the audience, which I was not so immune to myself. They’re a pretty incredible live unit, which makes this whole tour somewhat bittersweet, being the final tour of this particular outfit.
This being the first of three days of performances at The Lodge Room did not mean that such an experienced band wouldn’t fall prey to technical issues. Somewhere around the third song, which was almost an hour into their set, some sort of low-end feedback hum loudly proclaimed itself and Gira was not having it. “What the fuck is going wrong?!” he loudly questioned, after his initial proclamation of said hum seemed not to be resolved in a timely enough manner. While the issue ultimately found resolution, it seemed like there may still have been a few things that were irking Gira throughout, but that didn’t stop the band from putting on a hell of a performance.
