Swans

Alongside Sonic Youth, Swans took inspiration from New York's punk and noise scenes and created their own form of distorted, alternative rock aesthetic, full of heavy downbeats and sustaining guitars. Formed in 1979 at a time when the city was particularly violent and dystopian, leader and sole constant member Michael Gira led the band in building great angry walls of droning distortion on early albums Filth (1983), Cop (1984), and Greed (1986). Full of dark, confrontational lyrics, the band's mood mellowed slightly with the addition of vocalist Janet Jarboe in 1984 and became slightly more accessible on Children Of God (1987) before adding banjos and acoustic guitars on Love Of Life (1992). They took another leftfield departure on the ambient, minimalist double album Soundtracks For The Blind (1996) before the band split in 1997 with Gira going on to form Americana group Angels Of Light. Reforming in 2010 for My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky, they received huge critical acclaimed for 12th studio album The Seer (2012), regarded by many fans as their best work. The band continued to release critically acclaimed albums such as To Be Kind (2014), The Glowing Man (2016), and Leaving Meaning (2019). In February 2022, the group released Is There Really a Mind?, an album of acoustic demos, in order to fund the recording of their next studio album. In June of 2023, the group’s 16th studio album, The Beggar, was released and was chiefly comprised of full band recordings of songs initially issued on there Is There Really a Mind? in demo form.

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