Swans with Little Annie & Paul Wallfisch

Swans, formed in 1982 in NYC by Michael Gira, are a legendary experimental rock band blending no wave, industrial, and post-rock. Known for intense live shows and tracks like “A Little God in My Hands,” they release Birthing on May 30, 2025. Their fall 2025 North American Tour with Little Annie & Paul Wallfisch starts Sept 4 in Philly.

Quickly infamous for their punishing, brutal and repetitive onslaughts of sound, extreme volume levels, and the self-abusing, abject shouts and growls of Gira’s sloganeering vocals, Swans gradually transformed over 15 years, ultimately venturing into harsh mechanical proto-industrial rock, to sprawling shifts of texture and perspective (see the bucolic atmospheric folk idles and martial stomps of their much heralded Children of God double LP from 1987), to gentle acoustic-based songs, and finally on to their ultimate statement, Soundtracks For The Blind (1997) which somehow incorporated all of these elements at once, across well over 2 hours of music in one album.