Live Rope is a 2024, and the overall tenth, live album by American experimental rock band Swans.[1][2] Released in full as a USB "credit card" as well as in edited forms on CD and vinyl, the album served as a fundraiser for the seventeenth studio album Birthing and was their first live album since 2017's Deliquescence.[3] The album comprises recordings from the band's tour supporting their previous album The Beggar, which took place from May 2023 to May 2024, and contains transformed material from that album as well as Leaving Meaning and Birthing.[4][5][6][7]
Unlike previous fundraiser albums (with the exception of We Rose from Your Bed with the Sun in Our Head), which were released in limited quantities, the regular CD version of "Live Rope" was eventually announced to be made available perpetually as a live album in its own right.[8] The vinyl and USB releases were limited to 1,000 and 1,300 copies respectively.
Live Rope consists of the entirety of the band's performance at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, New York City, on 18 May 2024 (lightly edited on the CD and vinyl releases), as well as additional performances of previously released tracks (The Memorious, Cathedrals of Heaven, and Leaving Meaning) recorded at Amare, The Hague on 19 November 2023. Leaving Meaning, played initially as an introductory section for Birthing, additionally interpolates Cloud of Unknowing from the 2016 album The Glowing Man.[4] Prior to the North American leg of the tour, the Amare show had been planned to be released as a live album, but ultimately, only three songs were used.[9]
The album contains live recordings of songs from the band's previous two albums, Leaving Meaning and The Beggar, on the 2023 and 2024 tours, where both albums' material saw their live debuts. The album also featured three new songs, Rope/The Beggar, Away, and Birthing. The former, at 86 minutes (expanded from its original length of 10 minutes), is the band's longest song to date by a significant margin, surpassing the 46-minute The Knot from their 2017 album Deliquescence. Rope/The Beggar was also reworked for the following album, with the first half being used as an introduction to Away in closer (Rope) Away and the second half being reworked as opener The Healers. As a whole, at 183 minutes in length, the album is additionally to date the band's longest release, also exceeding Deliquescence at 155 minutes.[4]
A film, (Rope) The Beggar, was also created by Italian-American director Marco Porsia chronicling the full Williamsburg show. It was included in initial copies of "Birthing".[10]
