Pop Music Review : Swans Songs for Those Whose World Is Gray

Conversation about the Swans used to revolve around pain and power and amplified jackhammers, and how long it took your ears to stop ringing after you saw the New York noise band play. They sang about brutality and dominance the way that Springsteen sings about cars ‘n’ bars.

These days, the Swans sound more like the early, drony Velvet Underground than they do like a cement mixer--they even record for a major label, MCA--and Cure fans seemed to outnumber punks at their packed Palace show on Wednesday at least 3-to-1. The beat is still huge, slow and relentless, but the spaces around it are filled with “pretty” strummed guitar. It’s as if they wanted to show us that they could make a wall of noise from sad minor-7th chords too. The Swans live were pretty sleepy stuff, perfect for those whose world is gray.

Michael Gira, Swan No. 1, kind of crooned in a flat, deep voice like some ungodly mixture of Joe Cocker and Johnny Cash, and thrashed at one-third speed about the stage like a frontman on a metal video slowed way down. Jarbo, the keyboardist for most of the set, did as good a Nico impersonation as there’s been in a while, like a Valley Girl doing Marlene Dietrich.