Swans - Leaving Meaning. (2LP)

Swans’ Leaving Meaning landed on 25 October 2019, the first record after Michael Gira shuttered the fearsome 2010 to 2017 lineup. You can feel that reset from the first minutes. The intensity is still there, but it’s refracted through a looser circle of collaborators, which gives the album a different sort of gravity. It’s less about bulldozing a riff for twenty minutes and more about slowly opening a space, inviting players in, and letting the air change.

Gira curated an intriguing cast. Australian improv trio The Necks slide into the mix with their patient pulse and rippling detail, and their fingerprints are all over The Nub, where the music creeps and coils rather than explodes. Baby Dee takes the vocal spotlight on that track, her quivering delivery cutting through the murk like a bare bulb in a dark room. Anna von Hausswolff turns up too, adding spectral harmonies that feel like they’re floating from a church somewhere just beyond the song’s walls. Ben Frost contributes tension and texture. It’s a lot of personalities to handle, yet the album still moves with the single-minded focus you expect from a Swans project.

There are moments here that scratch the old itch. The Hanging Man stomps forward on a hammered rhythm, Gira administering his preacherly cadence while guitars scrape and howl. Sunfucker smoulders until it spits sparks. But there’s a new tenderness tucked between the bruises. Annaline is a measured, bittersweet drift that Gira had workshopped solo before this recording, now fitted with soft edges and a careful hush. What Is This is disarming in its plain-spoken wonder, all open palms and searching eyes. Then there’s It’s Coming It’s Real, which arrived as an early taste of the album and still works like a slow incantation. The title track sits quietly at the centre, all mantra and fog, like Gira is testing the resonance of the room itself.

What makes Leaving Meaning so compelling is the sense that Swans didn’t just change personnel, they changed approach. Instead of the unit that levelled venues across the 2010s, this is a revolving gathering of friends and foils. That matters. The Necks aren’t there to be a backing band, they’re there to shift the album’s weather system. Baby Dee doesn’t guest for novelty, she reframes what a Swans song can carry. You get the feeling Gira is less interested in supremacy and more in stewardship, guiding the record’s energy rather than dominating it.

Critics cottoned on to that. The album drew warm notices from places that have followed Swans for decades, with The Guardian and Pitchfork both highlighting the way it opens new doors without slamming shut the old ones. Fans have gravitated to The Hanging Man and The Nub for obvious reasons, but keep an ear on Cathedrals of Heaven, where the low end blooms like a black flower, and on the careful layering that makes even the quieter songs feel huge.

If you’re trawling a Melbourne record store and spot Leaving Meaning vinyl in the racks, pick it up. The music breaths at volume, with a low-end thrum and a patient rise that suits the format. Swans vinyl has a habit of rewarding those winter nights when you’ve got time to sit with it, and this one is no exception. For folks who buy Swans records online, you’ll find this release filed alongside the late-career run that made so many new believers. It belongs there, but it also points somewhere else, toward a looser, more collaborative future. For collectors building a shelf of Swans albums on vinyl, it’s a pivot piece that helps the story make sense.

I’ve spun a lot of vinyl records Australia wide that aim for grandeur and end up puffed and hollow. Leaving Meaning doesn’t do that. It hums with patience. It trusts repetition, but not as a blunt instrument. It lets guest voices rewire the house, then it switches the lights off and on to see how the shadows fall. If the monolithic roar of The Seer or To Be Kind was your thing, you’ll still find plenty here to rattle the windows, but the way this album holds back becomes its own thrill. It’s Swans stepping into a new room and choosing not to fill it straight away. The echoes are the point.