First the setlist. I didn't write it down, but I'm pretty sure I have all the songs here, and the order is mostly right.
Little Mouth (New)
Opium (New)
Reeling the Liars In (New)
Promise of Water
Blind
I Crawled
My Brothers Man
Destroyer
Nations
New York Girls
Sometimes I Dream I'm Hurting You
To Live Through Someone
God Damn the Sun
And now a few words about the venue. One word really sums it up: Tiny. When we got to the door and saw people sitting around, I thought maybe we were in the lounge area at first. But no. That was the performance space. It was easily the smallest one I've ever been in by far. There couldn't have been much more than 100 people there (if that), and they were crammed in. There wasn't even a stage, and because of the shortage of space, we ended up right in front of Michael Gira, sitting right at his feet. This might seem cool, but it actually wasn't. In order to see him, I had to look up, and my neck quickly became sore. As a result, I was pretty uncomfortable for the entire set. Also, the lack of air circulation made the place stifling by the end. The humidity forced Michael Gira to tune after nearly every song.
Pictures also weren't allowed. So what you see above is all we could get before they shut us down.
But one cool thing that happened was that the show basically started as soon as we sat down (not that there was no waiting. We had to wait in line outside until they were ready to let us in). As you can see by the setlist, Michael Gira opened with three new songs, one of which (I think it was "Little Mouth") he claimed to have just finished that day. "Little Mouth" and "Reeling the Liars In" were somewhat soft even by Gira's recent standards. "Opium" sounded like something that could be a strong rock song with a band behind him. Or not. It was by far my favorite of the new songs. Before playing it, he asked the audience if anyone had ever smoked opium. When no one said yes, he called us all pansies and bragged that he started smoking it at 15.
The set pulled from all of the Angels of Light albums except for the first one. And he included an acoustic version of "I Crawled" that I certainly wasn't expecting. It translated to the solo-acoustic performance better than you might expect. A lot of his Swans material does. The last time I saw him perform, he played a version of "I am the Sun" that could stand alongside both the live Swans version and the album version.
In fact, it's the Angels of Light songs that sometimes don't translate as well without a full band behind him. Both solo sets that I've seen have included a version of "Sometimes I Dream I'm Hurting You", and that song just doesn't work as well for me without that bass line that's on the album. However, "Promise of Water" actually became more agressive and forceful with Gira stomping his foot, yelling and playing his guitar as loud as it would allow while still sounding good.
The most interesting part of the night for me had nothing to do with the music. Norm Westberg, probably the most famous former Swans guitarist, was in attendance and sitting right behind me. I didn't know he was there until Gira dedicated the entire set to him. During pauses between songs, Gira would and Westberg had a few brief conversations about Swans not getting paid for shows back in the day. I usually don't say this, but I wish we had gotten more story time last night. From what little I heard last night (and what I've read), I have a feeling that those early shows were extremely interesting. I probably would have been happy just sitting and listening to the two reminisce for an hour.
But instead we got music for an hour. And as good as it was, by the time he played "God Damn The Sun", I was ready for it to be over. I think he was too. Every time he asked how much time he had left, he seemed distressed at how much he had. I kind of shared his feeling. Not that it was a bad set, but I was extremely uncomfortable by the end, and it was getting kind of hard to enjoy the set.
No comments:
Post a Comment