Swans’ “Its Coming, Its Real” is a lush, soaring soundscape

On Monday I texted a friend that I’d never heard Swans (Remember my super-judgmental unbelievably narrow comfort zone from yesterday? Now you know why I’ve never heard them or any other Michael Gira work. I was aware of his cowboy hat, though, so… there’s that.) so I decided to start with their first LP Filth from 1983 and move through their discography from there. My initial reaction is that Its interesting enough but I’d hard-pressed to say that I need to hear it again. 

After I finished Filth and saw that they had a brand new song out. I decided to check that out instead of proceeding to the next album. Then I checked it out again. Then again. And again two more times on the way home. Then again on Tuesday morning (though oddly enough after I listened to a Demi Lovato song that was stuck in my head) and again when I got to work. All told in the past 4 days I’ve listened to this nearly 8-minute song at least 10 times. This is out of character for my defective attention span.

I hesitate to review this because anything I write will fall short so I will leave it at this:

“Its Coming, Its Real” is transcendent.

As the text from my mom said after she listened to it, “Wow…”.