That interview guy made me hit stop stop even before Gira appeared. Does this make me a bad person?

Edit: OK, I persevered, and the host guy became more informative than annoying, then a different interview guy did a pretty good job. Sorry about my initial rection above.

Don't worry, I had the same painful reaction at first.

Thor Harris suffers with Major Depression.

I fuckin love Thor. I met him before the Sep 5th show....such a nice person. And the fact that he is so open about depression and has done this work about it makes me love him even more.

The show was fuckin fantastic. I didn't recognize some pieces, mixed amongst the TBK/Seer bits, and I assumed they were pre -2010 which I know fuck all about. Turns out they are all NEW. Frankie M especially blew my fuckin mind. Will we get another epic studio album in 2016? Soundtracks was at the merch table for $15!! It's so fuckin ambient in comparison to their latest work. The Sound might be my new favourite Swans song though. TBK/Seer is what got me into this band, and I'm so fuckin happy that I got to see them in this incarnation.

I should have went to this show :(

Bought a ticket to the Prague show this October. :)

Swans Expand World Tour into 2015

Swans 2014/2015 Tour Dates:
11/22 – Utrecht, NL @ Le Guess Who Festival
11/23 – Copenhagen, DK @ Vega Main Hall
11/24 – Oslo, NO @ Rockefeller
11/25 – Stockholm, SE @ Slakthuset
11/26 – Helsinki, FI @ Tavastia
11/28 – St. Petersburg, RU @ Kosmonavt
11/29 – Moscow, RU @ VOLTA
12/01 – Poznan, PL @ Eskulap
12/02 – Gdansk, PL @ Klub B90
12/03 – Warsaw, PL @ Basen
12/04 – Athens, GR @ Gazi Music Hall
12/05 – Thessaloniki, GR @ Bloc 33
12/07 – Brighton, UK @ Drill:Brighton
12/08 – Nottingham, UK @ Rescue Room
12/12 – Brooklyn, NY @ Warsaw


01/17 – Hobart, AU @ Mofo Festival
01/24 – Melbourne, AU @ Sugar Mountain Festival
01/27 – Tokyo, JP @ O-East
01/28 – Osaka, JP @ Club Quattro
01/30 – Hong Kong, CN @ The Vine
01/31 – Tapei City, TW @ Legacy
02/03 – Shanghai, CN @ Mao Livehouse
02/04 – Beijing, CN @ Yugong Yishan
02/17 – Portland, ME @ Port City Music Hall
02/18 – Providence, RI @ Columbus Theater
02/19 – Montreal, QC @ Theatre National
02/20 – Toronto, ON @ Phoenix Concert Theater


02/21 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall
02/23 – Grand Rapids, MI @ The Pyramid Scheme
02/24 – Cincinnati, OH @ Woodward Theater
02/25 – Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Ballroom
03/01 – Mexico City, MX @ Nrmal Festival at Deportivo Lomas Altas
03/23 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
03/25 – Baltimore, MD @ Baltimore Soundstage
03/26 – Richmond, VA @ The Broadberry
03/27 – Carrboro, NC @ Cats Cradle
03/28 – Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West
03/28 – Knoxville, TN @ Big Ears Festival
03/31 – Jacksonville, FL @ Jack Rabbit’s
04/01 – Saint Petersburg, FL @ State Theater
04/02 – Pensacola, FL @ Vinyl Music Hall
04/03 – New Orleans, LA @ One Eyed Jacks
04/04 – Dallas, TX @ Trees
04/06 – Austin, TX @ The Parish
04/09 – Albuquerque, NM @ Sunshine Theater
05/21 – London, UK @ Roundhouse

Coming to my town. To a fine new venue in my town. But I probably won't be able to go because it's on a Tuesday. So sad to have to work for a living.:( Maybe I should just be one of the 48% who expects the government to take care of me from cradle to grave so I can just pursue leisure activities. Hey, with that last sentence, maybe I can work for Mittens Romney!

Holy Fucking shit I might actually be able to pull off getting to one of those US shows.

Nice. I am so ready for another live Swans experience. I think my eardrums have finally started to heal up after the last one.

You have adequate time to put in a time off request, surely. Just shoot your boss an email ad say you're pretty sure you're going to have swine flu on the 24th. Or if you're working for a corporation, just give up some vacation hours or something.

The Cincinnati gig is actually the one that looks most promising for me. I looked into the Grand Rapids gig, but it's a long drive and the venue looks ... well, fairly I'll equipped for a Swans gig. Tiny, with lots of windows. Might as well seal uranium in a dishcloth. Gives me a bad feeling.

It's not just work, I have family stuff going on as well. But I'm not ruling it out. If you do end up going to the Cincy gig, let me know and maybe we can meet up. A word of warning about The Woodward Theater, though. It's not the tiniest place in the world but it ain't the largest one, either. I would advise earplugs.

Thanks. I would really like to check the place out. But my schedule isn't perfectly malleable either, and I can't honestly say if I'll be free myself.

I feel your irritation at having to work for a living... I'm honestly in the same boat, and last spring I felt the full sting of a lay-off for the first time in my adult life, after years of busting my ass for the same corporation. It's almost comical how disposable people are, and how little hard work actually matters when you're in an at-will position and your superiors have personal issues with you. So I'm in no position to piss off anymore employers, considering how lucky I am to have found another positon.

Years of working 50 hour weeks, putting my own goals and "dreams" on hold, and despite it all, I'm at the mercy of rich assholes who "work from home" half the time.

Money sucks. Fiends rule.

I don't mean to make it sound like "working for a living" is some cruel and unusual form of punishment that only the most unlucky bastards have to deal with. I'm sure just about everybody on SYG works very hard.

But then there's the assholes who don't do a thing, and take advantage of government subsidies that are supposed to go to the severely disabled and disadvantaged. That's what I mean when I say I "feel you." That shit drives me crazy.

I was taken somewhat aback by your original post. Not that it offended me, just wasn't sure what purpose it had in this thread???

I have a buddy who has an office job in Dallas and he just about refuses to attend a concert on a week night because of work the next day......as if staying up late and getting up early is that big of a deal.

Swans are worth doing whatever you must to see them live.

A little something new from Swans to be thankful for......

I've been living with Soundtracks for weeks, and it took a while to hit me, Man. I mean, it has everything plus the kitchen sink too. Makes The White Album sound like Foo Fighters. It's such a beautiful album. (I couldn't call Seer or TBK "beautiful".) Took me a long time to realize that Animus and The Sound are the same song, huh? ie With variations, separated by a CD switch and a Jarboe gem. The centerpiece of this 142min epic. I will not conquer this for a very long time. At first the various styles present made me dislike it, because it didn't sound "whole" like TBK or Seer. It sounded broken. Twitterish. ADD. But now it sounds whole, "of a piece", a mood.

I'm drunk.

Im just glad you're finally digging into the band's back catalogue. Soundtracks For The Blind is different because it's a different band. The Swans of the 2010's are excellent, but you can't really call any of their work "no-wave"... Swans circa Soundtracks were an entirely different beast. It's important to recognize the differences and give all incarnations of the band equal play time if you want to truly appreciate the band.

Kinda like Sonic Youth, really. I mean, look at how different Bad Moon Rising is from, say, Rather Ripped... or, christ, even EVOL & Sister, the albums that immediately followed. Now Sonic Youth didn't have anywhere near the same kind of personnel changes... But the two bands have a lot in common... philosophically if not always stylistically.

But man- Soundrtracks is a glorious, ambitious weird fucking masterpiece. I don't know if I'd say that it makes the White Album look like a Foos album (ha!) but it's on the same creative level.

I'm drunk too.

I've listened to this at least five times over the past couple of days......love all the different ways to breath, Oxygen.

Oxygen is great. I've only really listened to the album in full, consecutively on my iPod, either at work or in the car, so it's been hard to isolate specific tracks that I like more than others. But Oxygen is one that I know is near the top.

I'm trying to go through some of my preferred rock-type albums from 2014, because it feels like it was just an electronic year for me. But To Be Kind, Drop by Thee Oh Sees, Dub Thompson's 9 Songs and Perfect Pussy's Say Yes to Love have all held up extremely well, so maybe I've been selling the the good-old post-punk & indie a bit short.

Can't wait to see Swans in 2015. Can't fucking wait!