You know

The World of Skin were an unassailable Swans diversion project if there’s anyone who missed that stuff and might be interested

Agreed. I saw them twice during their "last shows before death". I hate when bands do that.

I remember when The Burning World came out. I even liked it but still sort of felt like it was personal betrayal which was a weird attitude considering how deeply the Swans exhausted the spine crushing angle before that. I saw them touring that record, too.

I remember, vaguely, and this is hard to google but it was either Jon Spencer or Steve Albini, and back then then those guys were only associated with Pussy Galore, Big Black, and Rapeman - Blues Explosion and all that hugely successful record producing hadn’t happened yet, but one of those two bashed the **** out of the Swans for doing “Barry Manilow” **** (I think it was Jon Spencer)

I think either me or my friend asked Michael Gira about the comment (or maybe I just read it in a magazine, my memory is foggy as hell) and he said, “Yeah. I don’t get that ****. It sure isn’t going to help me sell any records.”

I bought The Burning World btw.

But it’s easy for me to expect the band to put their legacy in front of their rent.

And the Swans are one of the greatest bands of all time and their records range from great to unassailable. I still feel like these new records are too long but they’d probably tell me I don’t have to listen to the entire thing at once if I don’t want to.

Anyway, I forgot about The Burning World “betrayal” when Goo came out. That’s an album I still haven’t made peace with.

Everything Swans is amazing