Jenny Hval is a brave performer. She stands, quietly reflective and serious-faced, and delivers a set that’s either high art or a breakdown unfurling before our eyes. Maybe it’s both. Either way, hers is a challenging, uncompromising semi-spoken word performance. As I say, it’s a brave thing to do – especially when she’s opening for Swans. It’s getting crowded down the front before Jenny takes the stage, and people are eager for the main event.
It begins with Thor Harris alone on stage, half-hidden behind the immense wall of amps (the stage doesn’t quite accommodate all their gear, and the drum kit peeps out through a small gap in the centre, while the vast set of auxiliary percussion is almost falling out the back door) crashing a colossal gong. The sound waves build for the best part of ten minutes, building the tension before the rest of the band enter. Christoph Hahn, dapper as ever, creates a daunting screed of sound from his lap steel, run through a rack of effects and a pair of volume pedals.
Although they’re touring their new album, they open with a new, unreleased track, ‘Frankie M.’ The timing’s a little out in places and the sound a little shakey, but as with so many of the songs on the last two albums which have evolved on the road, the chances are it will undergo numerous mutations before it appears in studio form. It’s the first of three new songs in a seven-song set that runs for a Herculean two hours and 20 minutes. Rather than feeling drawn out or indulgent, the songs are given full room to breathe and to reveal their manifold layers.
The performance picks up in every respect, not least of all intensity and volume, as the set progresses: ‘Just a Little Boy’ and ‘A Little God in My Hands’ are tight and sprawling respectively, Gira manic as he affects the ‘little boy’ voice to cry ‘I’m not human!’ from the midst of a lumbering blues riff.
A shout from the crowd for ‘Oxygen’ is swiftly declined by Gira. Instead, they give us ‘Don’t Go’, another new song with all the makings of a future classic, although one thing is missing: the extreme volume for which Swans are legendary. By any other band’s standards, they’re loud – punishingly so – but they don’t hit that level at which cellular rearrangement occurs within the bodies of those in front of the speakers. Actually, something else is missing, too: lighting. The stage rig goes out early and, unable to see his fretboard, Gira asks for the lights above the audience to be brought up. Stage lighting is restored later in the set, only to go down again near the end.
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The end... they bludgeon at the two chords of ‘Bring the Sun’ for an eternity, and it’s devastating. Instead of leading into ‘Toussaint L’Overure’, they segue into another new song, ‘Black Hole Man’.
Gira’s crazy dancing and radiant energy is something to behold as he leads his fellow musicians through and endless succession of crescendos, guiding each player through the richly layered sound and mixing the sound in real time from within the semicircular set-up of amps. The focus of the six players is remarkable, the intensity of the collective performance spellbinding.
Despite Gira having attained 60, and the collective age of the band approaching the incalculable, 33 years into their career, Swans are unquestionably at their peak: that ‘To Be Kind’ is the most successful album of their career in commercial terms is heartening but only tells a part of the story. they’ve reached this point through inconceivable hard work and dedication, and without selling out. Live, there isn’t a band on the planet that can touch them, and it’s clear they’re nowhere near done yet.
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