Album of the Week: Swans – Birthing
Birthing is the 17th studio album by Swans, the ever-evolving project of Michael Gira, formed in New York in 1981. The band traversed a vast sonic terrain, no wave, post-punk, industrial, folk-rock, goth, noise-rock, and alt-rock, before temporarily disbanding in 1997 after releasing their magnum opus, the sprawling, abstract Soundtracks for the Blind. Since reforming in 2010, Swans have delivered a string of critically revered albums, including the monolithic The Seer (2012) and To Be Kind (2014), both colossal works of sublime, uncompromising post-rock. In their wake came The Glowing Man (2016), Leaving Meaning (2019), and 2023’s The Beggar, albums that seemed to signal a subtle retreat, a slowing down, a pulling inward from the grandiose scale of their earlier 2010s output.
Which is why Birthing genuinely feels like a revelation, a return to the world-building, transcendental sound-sculpting that Swans do better than anyone. Now 71, Gira has stated this will be the last album of its kind that he will make. If that’s true, Birthing is a magnificent, almost mythic way to call time. Spanning three slabs of vinyl, or two CDs, and clocking in just short of two hours, this is not a casual listen. Birthing demands immersion. It’s a sit-down, lights-out, surrender-yourself kind of record. With only seven tracks and over 115 minutes (averaging 16 minutes each), this is rock music stretched to its most spiritual and cinematic extremes. Equal parts controlled chaos and free-form exaltation.
The album opens with the 21-minute The Healers, and as its title suggests, it finds Gira in full preacher mode, delivering a deranged, almost liturgical sermon that feels both like the end of the world and the start of a new one. Despite the bleakness of its lyrical incantations, it’s impossible not to be drawn in, vortex-like, to its desolate landscape. Apocalyptic in a distinctly Southern Gothic way, you can practically see the abandoned towns and empty chapels with Swans playing in the last church left standing. The track opens with a spare ambient Americana, lap-steel whirs and hushed vocals before erupting into a rhythmic, grinding force. Siren-like guitars and Gira’s guttural howls summon something between ritual and possession, the ground metaphorically splitting open to reveal hell itself. What begins as meditative ends in psychedelic noise-rock obliteration. It’s a bad trip to the core of existence.
Lead single I Am A Tower follows, another epic that inches toward the 20-minute mark. It begins ghostly, with spectral female vocals and a hushed, celestial aura of shakers, bells, tambourines, and a slow drone building patiently. Gira’s deeply sung monologue emerges, a cosmic quest rendered in sound, searching for something undefined yet spiritually vital. As the band builds behind him, the track surges into an air-raid crescendo, only to unexpectedly bloom into a glistening guitar section that feels like the dawn after endless darkness. And then, shockingly, comes perhaps the closest thing to pop Swans have created in decades. The outro transforms into a radiant, almost euphoric release. Gira chants the title refrain in a call-and-response chorus, flanked by a celestial wall of harmonies. It feels triumphant, like a noise-drenched cousin to Bowie’s Heroes. It’s the most accessible, even uplifting, moment Swans have delivered in years.
Record two begins with the title track, Birthing, which offers something approaching ambient respite. It unfurls slowly from an ethereal blend of bubbling electronics, soaring waves of distorted guitar, and hymn-like vocal motifs, underscored by eerie samples of childlike babble. An anthemic refrain slowly takes shape before the band locks into a crunchy, trance-inducing jam. Later, Gira delivers the track’s ‘song’ section, backed by soft, poignant piano in a moment of unexpected tenderness rarely glimpsed since the post-2010 Swans rebirth, but one that recalls the haunting beauty of White Light from the Mouth of Infinity. Here, both vocally and lyrically, Gira evokes Jim Morrison and throughout the album there are echoes of the essence of The End, Horse Latitudes, and When the Music’s Over. But rather than a retro psych-rock tribute, Birthing is widescreen, cosmic Americana rendered with huge sonic detail.
Throughout Birthing, Swans’ ambition is boundless. The album constantly draws on echoes from the band’s vast, genre-defying past, yet always pushes further outward. What’s undeniable is the sheer immensity of sound, the scope is staggering. There’s a sense of totality here that may even eclipse the scale of The Seer or To Be Kind, and in many ways, Birthing feels very final. Given its extreme length and the fact that most tracks take up an entire side of vinyl, it can, if necessary, be approached as three albums in one. While full immersion is ideal, listeners daunted by the two-hour runtime may find this segmented approach more achievable and rewarding. Either way, Birthing requires both patience and dedication.
Guardian Spirit is a foreboding, murky descent into swampy blues. Gira’s gravelly, haunted narrative voice returns in a spiraling, increasingly unhinged composition. The track lurches like a ghost ship steered by a madman through stormy seas, unsteady, malevolent, and completely captivating. Penultimate track The Merge is perhaps the album’s most leftfield detour. It opens with warped electronics and a steady pulse that evokes Swans’ early industrial experiments. As it unfolds, a rising tide of choral voices builds toward a cathartic climax, only to dissolve into a strange, ghostly folk-blues coda, laced with scattered strings, field recordings, and fragmented electronic textures.
Finally, (Rope) Away serves as the album’s stunning conclusion, a sustained 15-minute crescendo that may be the most celestial thing Swans have ever recorded. A slow-motion explosion of percussive clatter, droning guitars, and soaring vocals, it builds skyward with overwhelming emotional force. When it finally breaks, it reveals a fragile folk-rock coda that radiates genuine tenderness and emotion. A moment of beauty after the storm.
Once again, Swans have delivered an album that defies scale and expectation. Birthing is a gigantic, strange, uncompromising, and deeply affecting listen. If this is indeed the last album of its kind, then music will be worse off for its absence. A towering, totemic work from one of the most consistently inventive, ambitious, and enduring bands of our time.
