Last time I saw MICHAEL GIRA perform it was in the late 1980s at Manchester’s Ritz ballroom, where he was crawling around the stage half naked screaming and roaring as Swans attempted to open up a hole in the earth’s crust.
It’s all a far different proposition these days, of course. Tonight Gira sits plaintively on stage with just an acoustic guitar, a mournful expression below a functional haircut and wearing braces over a plain shirt, the net result of which is which is suggestive of a Midwestern farmer with the soul of the most irked of Old Testament prophets.
He opens gently, with God Damn the Sun from Swans watershed Burning World album, the point where he turned the tiller from noise terrorism to stretching melancholia into an art form. He strums out the spare, desolately beautiful chords, his baritone aching out across the crowd. Thus settled, he announces he has a sore throat before launching into A Promise Of Water, whose smouldering lung-power betrays several fractures. Following that with the scalding Nations in full-on apocalyptic preacher rant seems ill-suited to the fragile state of Gira’s vocal chords and, despite the impressive spectacle of his repeated, ragged screams of “I am the god of this fucking land!”, you can’t help thinking he’d be better off adopting a more brooding level.
He acknowledges as much, dropping the intensity a little with the near-comical bleakness of Swans’ Failure. Twenty-five years ago, who’d have thought that you could calm a set down by playing a Swans song? The mood during the performance is predictably intense, with Gira shaking his head and blinking uncomprehendingly at the close of each song as though roused from a trance, or a possession, but he is not without his lighter side, chatting amiably during mid-songs re tunings. “How’s life, folks?” he enquires in avuncular fashion, cocking an ear to the responses. “I pity you,” he replies with a smile.
“So, are you all college students?” he asks, before musing “I always wanted to be in a college rock band like REM.”
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A few songs later though, in response to some remark from the front, Gira abruptly snaps, his mood souring in an instant at whatever was said. A fractious mood settles on the crowd, but Gira closes with the sparse murder ballad Rose of Los Angeles and departs, smiling nevertheless. There’s subsequently a small exodus of undernourished looking men with straggly beards from the front, presumably happy with the sermon from their prophet.
Then it’s the turn of the inaptly named BOREDOMS to take the low stage and settle in behind their three drum-kits and banks of electronic noise machines, the latest line-up in their mercurial history.
Leader Yamantaka Eye (or whatever he’s calling himself these days) leaps onto the stage wielding two wired-up light globes which fizz and whirr with mysterious feedback, his dreadlocks spinning as though captured by wild electricity, raising his hands to the air and bringing them down in time with three pairs of hands smashing their cymbals. It’s a striking sight, albeit one denied to the majority of the crowd who, due to the poor layout of the club and low stage, can see little beyond the back of the heads of the people in front.
So although the next hour’s thunderous interlocking rhythms are audible throughout the hall, it’s a deep shame that only those close to the front get to see the whirling coordination of arms and manic activity. Not quite the extravaganza of their recent New York performance with 77 drummers, but nevertheless, the percussive trance-state saturates the crowd regardless of view lines, capping an intense and memorable evening.
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