Swans: To Be Kind review – perfectly listenable swamp blues

Since their emergence in New York in the 1980s, Michael Gira's Swans have enjoyed a reputation for some of the most terrifyingly bleak music imaginable. While there's no shortage of spluttering discordance and merciless, single-chord bludgeoning on 13th album To Be Kind, when the clouds part Swans' default sound is a perfectly listenable – though funereal – swamp-blues. It can be affecting: the way Some Things We Do reduces life to a dismal list of pointless activities ("We betray, we serve, we regret, we learn"); or how Gira's voice is swathed in a ghostly reverb on Just a Little Boy (For Chester Burnett)– the title is a reference to Howlin' Wolf – which skulks along at a deathly pace. But To Be Kind is uncompromising to the point of overindulgence. It's a patience-testing two hours long. One track, Bring the Sun/Toussaint L'Ouverture, clocks in at 34 minutes. It's like the Doors playing The End for ever, only without the easygoing bonhomie.