Swans To Play Brooklyn Masonic Temple (& elsewhere in N America)

In January I posted about Swans’ plans to reform, record, and tour. At the time, I had no idea I’d be helping to organize their biggest ever show in New York City. It’s an honor — Swans’ music/thought exerted a huge influence on me at a crucial time and the band’s remained one of my all-time favorites. I put together an acoustic M. Gira show at Housing Works a couple of years ago, but this is a different monster: Haunting The Chapel’s teamed up with the Blackened Music Series (we did Alcest at the Studio) and Issue Project Room to present Swans’ first show in NYC in more than a decade. It takes place 10/8 at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple (317 Clermont Ave). It will be very loud. Michael Gira handpicked Baby Dee to open. Her performance will be keyboards accompanied by a cello. Tickets go on sale Friday (5/14) at 10AM EST. We have info on that and the rest of the tour dates.

09/28 – Philadelphia,  PA @ Trocadero Theater
09/29 – Washington, DC @ Black Cat
09/30 – Boston, MA @ Middle East downstairs
10/01 – Montreal, QC @ Le National (Pop Montreal Fest)
10/02 – Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace
10/04 – Detroit, MI @ Crofoot Ballroom
10/05 – Chicago, IL @ Bottom Lounge
10/08 – Brooklyn, NY @ Masonic Temple
10/09 – New York, NY @ Bowery  Ballroom
10/22-24 – Birmingham, UK @ Supersonic Festival

Tickets go on sale Friday. You’ll be able to grab tickets for the Masonic Temple show at TicketWeb (I’ll post the link on Fri). Also, keep in mind:

THIS IS NOT A REUNION. It’s not some dumb-ass nostalgia act. It is not repeating the past. After 5 Angels Of Light albums, I needed a way to move FORWARD, in a new direction, and it just so happens that revivifying the idea of Swans is allowing me to do that. I’ll be using what I learned in the last several years to inform the way this new material develops, while carrying forward from where Swans left off with its final album Soundtracks For The Blind, and in particular, Swans Are Dead. If you have expectations about how Swans should be, that’s your business, but it would be a disservice to both of us if I were to make music with your needs in mind, and the music would certainly suffer as a result. In any event, I certainly never thought this day would arrive, but it’s inevitable, it’s here, it’s fate, so I’m succumbing to it. 

Helping me in this quest are the fantastic musicians and friends listed below. I’ll enter the studio with the songs, we’ll hash them out together, someone will come up with something unexpected, then that will lead to new ideas, the song will take a different trajectory and  the material will grow on its’ own. This is what I’m hoping, anyway.

As far as that album, Gira told me in January that the approach will be “basically where Soundtracks For The Blind/Swans Are Dead left off, with influence of Angels of Light in there too. Probably pretty severe tho, according to my present mood…”

Excellent.

Brandon @'Stereogum'

I once recorded Swans playing live at The Paradiso in Am*dam and it was SO loud that the result was nothing more than thick aural sludge!

Now all we need is some enterprising young hipster to bring them down to Australia...

Anyone?