Review: Swans, Marble Factory

Like Hollywood pictures of old, it begins with a gong and a roar. The man with the gong is Thor Harris, while the roar – a slow motion blast of noise and percussion that builds for a good half hour – is the sound of Swans. The roar leads into Frankie M, a swooning dream-dirge that recalls the Velvets at their most opiated. If you think a band opening their set with a 45-minute unreleased song is risky you were probably expecting someone else.

Band reformations aren’t usually very interesting. They’re generally a chance for the musicians to get a belated payday and the fans to hear the songs one more time. The re-emergence of Swans after 13 years on ice has been for the right reasons though. Their leader – the 58 year old Michael Gira – may look like a grizzled old soldier but his appetite for battle is beyond question, and the group of musicians he’s had with him since 2010 constitute one of the most powerful and skilful units in rock. In five years they’ve released three albums – two of them doubles and all critical smashes – and earned themselves a whole new audience. The Filthy Lucre Tour this most definitely isn’t.

A cheer goes up as Chris Pravdica slams into the bassline from With A Little God In My Hands, its menacing funk groove tipped over the edge by Thor Harris’ deranged circus trombone. “Oh universe,” pleads Michael Gira, “you stink of love!” It’s a line that seems to sum up the gutter/stars conflict at the heart of latterday Swans – a defiant assertion of value or meaning amid the rubble of lived experience.

The Cloud of Unknowing – the set’s slowly unfolding centrepiece – sees Gira at his most shamanic, his voice wandering dramatically from monastic chant to Lizard King portentousness as the band summon the most almighty fucking Om. It’s down to Earth again (relatively speaking) for Just A Little Boy, whose corrosive swamp blues is crowned with dissonant howls of guitar, manic percussion and demonic violin (that man Harris again). Swans end with Black Hole Man, a magnificent thirty minutes of pummelling rhythm and noise that bodes extremely well for the band’s next record.

Earlier in the evening, a compelling performance from support act Okkyung Lee is made uncomfortable by the mother of all misunderstandings. A warpspeed-fingered cellist whose repertoire of tonal effects includes both Lion Meets Lapdog and Air Raid in Spring, Lee’s intensely physical style is both rhythmically and sonically inventive. She looks surly from the start though, and a misjudged heckle makes things worse. “Play Air on the G String,” yells a wag in the crowd, presumably in the spirit of requesting Ace of Spades from a folk band. Unfortunately, the improv artist understands it differently. “You think because I’m a girl I’d look good in a g-string?” she asks at the end of her set. The ground under the Marble Factory yawns greedily, and the heckler is never seen again.