HIGH FLYING BIRD

As the forbidding figure behind New York post-punk noise provocateurs Swans, Michael Gira spent the bulk of the 80s as the sworn enemy of conventional melody, until new creative partners and an unsatisfactory spell with a major label saw new influences come into play. More recently he has ventured back down that original avant-garde road armed with a bigger, more ambitious sound. “I write because I have to,” he tells

- David Stubbs

"I try to make records that are like a film,” says Michael Gira, speaking via Zoom from Berlin where he is preparing for a tour, “and that comes from listening to those early Pink Floyd albums, or The Doors. But also, going even further back, to my parents having musical albums like South Pacific – or Disney records, which are very cinematic. And that’s still what I try to do.”

For those who associate Swans with their pulverising, eviscerating work of the early 80s, with album titles such as Filth and tracks including Raping A Slave, it might feel like a stretch to imagine that Snow White or Hollywood musicals had even the remotest role in their conception. Swans, however, with Gira as the constant member since 1982, are a complex entity, both in terms of what has fed into them and their output. While Gira’s lyrical vision and voice have been generally unwavering in their peculiar intensity, the musical context has shifted and evolved over the years, with an array of longstanding collaborators – ambient, blazing light and spirituality are now in play alongside the brutally rhythmical, the pitch black, the physical.

Indeed, Swans’ latest album, Beggar, is the work of a group who, precisely because of the passing of the decades rather than despite them, are in the best shape they have ever been. The understanding between Gira and musicians like Kristof Hahn, Larry Mullins, Dana Schechter, Christopher Pravdica, Phil Puleo and guest Ben Frost has increased in line with the battery of instruments Swans now have at their disposal, including lap steel guitar, exotic wind instruments and synthesizers, a contrast with the terse, guitar/drums/bass minimalism of their earliest material.