We’re more than a little excited about the impending release of Swans’ 13th album, To Be Kind, their first on Mute. Today, they’ve given us a taste of what to expect, with album track ‘A Little God In My Hands’, which you can download below. They’ve already announced tour dates, and will be heading to UK shores for a run of shows beginning at Manchester’s Academy 2 on May 22.
It’s also the first look we’ve had of the sleeve art, which features a painting by Bob Biggs, the founder of Slash magazine. Swans leader Michael Gira first asked to use Biggs’ work since 1981: "I noticed an unfathomable image on the wall [at a friend’s house]. It was a pastel of one of the baby images we now have decided to use as the art for the new Swans album. It’s an utterly banal image, isn’t it? But the thing is, it stuck with me, all these years… I look at Bob’s baby images as something like the Mona Lisa – utterly inscrutable, but ACHING to reach up to the surface. Or like one of Jasper Johns’ flag paintings – I just can’t figure them out, and I’m not supposed to do so, but they keep calling me back. Those images have remained in the back of my head since then, always nagging. I’m delighted that these images, finally, with Bob’s consent, can now act as innocent, but implacable sentinels for the music of Swans, after all these years."
