Swans - The Seer

I've been anticipating the review of this monster for a very long time; it has been nagging away at the back of my mind since I heard the album a few months ago. I almost wrote the review on the mp3 files I heard, but I pressured myself into waiting for the actual finished product, and boy am I glad that I did! The Seer is an absolute fucking monster of a record, and is by far the longest record I own at nearly 2 hours in length (I think it even outruns Bitches Brew by Miles Davis, although I could be wrong on that account so don't quote me on that). Swans have come literally leaps and bounds from My Father... that was released in 2010; literally, unexplainable progressiveness in such a short time is quite frankly mind boggling! But, that is what Swans have always done (for better or worse) and will most likely continue to do, should they ever somehow manage to figure out how to top this record for sheer ambition.

I got this excellent triple LP package directly from Young God Records on pre-order, and what a fantastic package it is, almost rivalling Boris & Sunn O)))'s Altar collaboration in terms of sheer shininess (although nothing quite beats Southern Lord shininess). The entire thing folds out like a rectangular snake, each partition holding a new record full of experimental, post rock-cum-noise madness, or a poster, or a download card, or a live dvd of an entire Swans performance. To top it off, the thing is signed on the back by the man himself, Mr. Michael Gira; the ringmaster in this circus of lunacy. Swans has had it's fair share of musicians, but it has always been about centring on Gira, and to an extent Westberg and Jarboe, but for once Gira doesn't shadow over as the "leader" (although he is that, if you get what I'm trying to say); the band is whole; each performer is bringing an equal amount to the table here. Phil Puleo and Thor's dual percussion attack is the defining backbone to the modern era Swans sound, and Christoph Hahn's oft-redneck-as-fuck slide guitar is fucking awesome as fucking fuck. I now want a slide guitar. The remaining two guitarist and one bassist flesh out the monumental cacophony almost perfectly, leaving Gira's baritone to lazily (or crazily) echo over the top of the whole lot of it almost like the icing on a rather large and weird cake. Oh, and Jarboe is back, if only for two songs.

It will take you several listens to even comprehend what-the-actual-fuck is going on here; "The Apostate" and "A Piece of the Sky" are both at the twenty minute mark, "The Seer" itself is just over thirty minutes, and "The Seer Returns" lulls on for another six, bringing the title track experience to nearly forty minutes. That's an hour and twenty for those four tracks alone, and you got a whole bunch of other tracks to comprehend on top of that! My only irk is that with the vinyl version the track list runs in a totally different order, and that all three of the massive tracks are split onto different sides of vinyl. With "The Seer" I can understand why for quality reasons, the title track and it's afterthought "The Seer Returns" (which is the original version of "The Seer", for those who've not heard the demos on We Rose From Your Bed...) takes up a whole disc in itself. But, I cannot understand why the two twenty minuters are split; they could easily take up a side each and not have to be broken up.

 

I could literally write on about this album for longer than it's actual duration so I'm going to round this off now. The Seer is a maddeningly ambitious record that will, without doubt, send you through various stages of insanity whilst trying to listen to the whole thing in one go. It is set to more than likely split the Swans fan base in two (again), and if I am totally honest a record of this gargantuan length does have a few dull moments (opener "Lunacy" springs to mind) but the longer, more progressive tracks more than make up for it. Give the track below a chance, and if you can stomach it, download / buy and love it forever!