“There really is no other force of music like Swans. Swans stand alone, integral, drenched in pathos. A band to end all bands.” – Thurston Moore

SWANS has always been a collection of singular performers, but there’s been one constant since its formation in 1982–singer, songwriter Michael Gira. With unfettered access to hundreds of hours of Gira / SWANS archives of never-seen-before recordings, videos, and photographs, the film brings us along the path they needed to carve for themselves. The film is many things, a musical history, a time-capsule, a tour diary, a concert film, but mostly it’s the story of a life in the arts, frequently difficult, spanning decades without a safety net, creating the work because Gira says “What else am I going to do?” As bandmate Thor Harris notes, “Michael is not a fearless person, but he is a fearless artist.”