First Listen: Swans, 'To Be Kind' — npr.org

hide captionSwans' new album, To Be Kind, comes out May 13. Swans' new album, To Be Kind, comes out May 13. Only on occasion does it make sense to praise music as scary, and somehow many of those occasions coincide with Swans sending new sounds out into the world. Since 1982, when the band emerged from the same New York "no wave" scene as noise-rock acts like Sonic Youth, Swans' seething intensity has been a default mode. Every element of the Swans sound is alarming, brutal, dark and sublimely beautiful for all the rage that gets articulated — and the sense of release that gets promised, too.

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