I've been listening to and loving it since the day it came out (I got the signed vinyl on preorder), and I know it's been getting a fair amount of attention lately (deservedly so), but it really just hit me this week how incredible Swan's new album The Seer is.

It's absolutely astounding when you consider the amount of little details there are in it, and then realize this is entirely its own form of music. It doesn't hit any single genre really well and redefines a lot of perceptions of music. A lot of the things I adore about Swans really came through to mesh as they should-- the use of bells, M. Gira's voice and tonality, and all the strange sounds they make with guitars.

It was definitely worth the 20+ years of work that went into it, and I think the fact that they consider it "still incomplete and evolving" is spot on. It's not a finished product because it spans so far beyond a single album in its existence.

EDIT: Adding on Michael Gira's quote, because he of course said it perfectly: "The Seer took 30 years to make. It’s the culmination of every previous Swans album as well as any other music I’ve ever made, been involved in or imagined. But it’s unfinished, like the songs themselves. It’s one frame in a reel. The frames blur, blend and will eventually fade."