Glen Hansard - From the streets of Dublin to the Oscars

Our weary suitcases were piled up on the sidewalk again; they had other and longer journeys to make.
But it doesn't matter, the road is life.
(Jack Kerouac)

The road is life: words from a world and a time light years away, yet never more fitting to sum up in a single line the novelistic life of Glen Hansard, the Irish singer-songwriter with the welcoming looks and the genuine spirit; traits that mark a deep sense of belonging to his own people, the people of Bono Vox and Sinead O'Connor, with whom he still sometimes sits in to play in Dublin pubs for a lucky few.
In the sprawling firmament of today's music scene, defined by the frenzy of indiscriminate downloads and the cut-price sell-off of talent shows, there are still artists capable of giving themselves to an audience with no emotional barriers, drawing from that mutual sharing a vital energy that goes beyond the strictly musical boundaries of art. Glen Hansard belongs to this endangered species, one that struggles more and more to break through, crushed and cheapened by the plague of compulsive streaming. Toughened by a long and gruelling apprenticeship spent literally in the middle of the street, later consolidated on stages across the world, his live approach follows the path laid down by the great rockers of the other side of the Atlantic, who remain for him a source of inspiration and reverence.

Anyone lucky enough to catch one of the shows he's recently played with his friend Eddie Vedder will have seen first-hand the reputation as a great live performer that follows him, and appreciated the far-from-marginal space the Pearl Jam frontman grants him at every show. After treading the cold paved streets of Dublin in the early '80s, Glen tasted premature fame with an acting role in the film "The Commitments", swallowed the pain of the fall after that fleeting success, savoured the joy of rebirth, and finally reached a goal unimaginable even in his wildest dreams: winning an Oscar for best original song for the independent film "Once", in which he also played the male lead. As if that weren't enough, shortly afterwards came the partnership with Vedder, alongside whom he still sets crowds alight around the world today. But his imprint, human before artistic, remains that of a humble street musician.

As if directed by some invisible puppet-master, his real-life story intertwines until it blurs with the fiction of the stage, successes and falls chasing and alternating with one another, while his artistic growth is marked by a constant back-and-forth of dualistic struggles between the myths of Eros and Thanatos, the primordial drives of love and death.

The origins

The street teaches you everything. It teaches you that to be heard you have to love what you do, you have to believe in it, and the money people give you is just a consequence of the attention they pay you, attention you have to earn. It teaches you to sing, to use the dynamics of guitar and voice, it teaches you to engage the audience.
(Glen Hansard)

Born in 1970 to Irish parents, at just thirteen years old Hansard decided to leave school to follow his one true passion, starting out as a busker on Grafton Street, Dublin, without a penny to his name but driven by his innate love of music and the steady support of his family. That direct relationship with an audience, and the urgency of sharing something with them, would leave an indelible mark on his artistic identity, one that would never leave him for the rest of his career. He soon became known for his gifts as a great entertainer: his shows were immediately embraced by the crowds that gathered around him, and his name began to make the rounds of the pubs and streets of the capital. Thanks to years of savings and his parents' help, he managed to scrape together enough money to put together and produce 50 demos, initially meant only for friends and family. As luck would have it, one of them ended up in the hands of a certain Denny Cordell of Island Records, who brought it to the attention of label founder Chris Blackwell. Glen managed to land a contract with the Irish label; buoyed by this small financial milestone, he decided to found Frames: an alternative band that would look to the rising star of the britpop world while keeping the myth of Van Morrison running through its veins. The lineup included guitarist Dave Odlum, singer Noreen O'Donnell, bassist John Carney, violinist Colm Mac Con Iomaire and drummer Paul Brennan, and made its debut at an Irish music festival in September 1990, though it was destined to remain in obscurity for another long 5 years.

The premature big-screen debut: "The Commitments"

The experience with the newly-formed Frames is in fact brought to an abrupt halt, because when the big screen calls, you can't say no. Especially when the one calling is Alan Parker, a hugely successful director thanks to many films built and shaped around music.
Barely in his twenties, Glen is chosen to play the part of the penniless guitarist in the film "The Commitments" (1991), based on the novel by Roddy Doyle. At the time he takes the job with little enthusiasm: the band at the heart of the film repeats like a mantra its mission to bring soul music to Dublin; the diet is: "James Brown for breakfast, Otis Redding for lunch, Smokey Robinson for dinner and Aretha for snacks in between", and the battle cry is: "The Irish are the blacks of Europe, the Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland, and the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin, so say it with me out loud: I'm black and I'm proud!" The young man isn't convinced, he fears cutting himself off too soon from his own roots, afraid of losing his authenticity and cultural identity.

But the film is a worldwide hit, becoming a genuine generational cult classic of the early '90s. In a later interview he would say: "The film was a wonderful experience, very easy. We were in Dublin, we'd get up at seven in the morning, work all day and go home. And there was a car to pick us up in the morning, so it was easy. It was a joy." But the joy, and unfortunately the money too, would soon run out: during the celebrations for the film's 25th anniversary, Glen would admit: "For some reason I think we all felt a bit burned, not by Alan or by the film company or by anyone in particular, but by the experience itself coming too soon - we were too young for that kind of experience."

The story of the Commitments, in the fiction of the big screen, ends with the two guitarists busking on the street for money, and in real life too Glen Hansard would soon have to take a job in a New York bar to patch up the struggling finances of Frames. "I desperately need money. I haven't become one of those musicians who live in luxury while everyone else deals with their own needs. Still, I'd rather work this way than rack my brains trying to figure out how to make money from music, letting the business side take over."

Artistic growth: The Frames

The Frames' debut album, Another Love Song, released in 1992, pays the price - naive but understandable - of needing enough material to play live as soon as possible. "All I could see was a huge stage and a ton of people. Me, my guitar, my songs [...] As producer I wanted the guy who had worked on 'Surfer Rosa', but I didn't even know his name. I knew the Pixies, and I loved that record like crazy." The album was produced by Gil Norton, the same man behind the Boston band's later work, but it turned out to be a total flop, both commercially and musically. The garage-punk-leaning production clashed badly with the band's folk inclination, which also suffered from their inexperience in the recording studio. The record lacks a clear direction: Glen would later admit, "I was making a basic mistake wanting to cut a rock album as my first record, because I didn't know how to write rock songs. They just weren't part of my vocabulary back then."

After being dropped by their label, the band members licked their wounds and kept recording and playing live. 1995 saw the release of Fitzcarraldo on Trevor Horn's ZTT label. The group's future musical direction finally came into focus: Hansard's poetic sensibility merged with a sturdier, more effective sound, resulting in a brilliant orchestral album, highlighted by the title track, a sweeping, pastoral anthem paying tribute to the Werner Herzog film that lends it its name.

If Fitzcarraldo is the fans' favorite, for this writer the Frames' artistic peak is the following album, Dance The Devil..., released in 1999: the band discovers a tougher rock attitude, and their stylistic approach becomes more personal and pronounced. The record gives us the band's best single, "Seven Day Mile": a heartfelt, vibrant dedication to former bassist Graham Downey, who had left over artistic differences; the theme of estrangement and distance is handled with an interpretive and musical intensity that surges in waves, pulling back for brief stretches of rhythmic variation before building to a gripping, unforgettable melodic crescendo at the end. It's followed, for a knockout one-two punch, by "Pavement Tune", a track with clear punk roots, boasting a powerhouse opening groove and an airy, singalong chorus built on a clever interplay of voice and guitar. The album is without doubt a hidden gem of 1990s Irish music waiting to be rediscovered and celebrated; the band kept enjoying great success at home, but remained largely unknown abroad.

The following two albums, both released on the new label Plateau Records, are also excellent: For The Birds and Burn The Maps, out in 2001 and 2004 respectively. The two LPs bring out the band's parallel souls: the first showcases the Frames' delicate, melancholic side, the second unleashes a muscular, energetic rock sound. After gaining a measure of fame abroad too, the band toured extensively across Europe and played a handful of shows in North America; this period produced their only live album, Set List (2002), a summation of the group's discography brought to the stage. Perhaps Glen was starting to chafe at being labeled an artist "good only live", or perhaps his time with the band was simply running its natural course; whatever the reason, the group made the questionable decision to record live in the studio what would become their farewell album, The Cost (2006). The result flattens songs that would later go on to define Glen's career, such as "Falling Slowly" and "When Your Mind's Made Up". Hansard's turning point seals his departure from the Frames and marks the increasingly defined rise of The Swell Season project with Markéta Irglová, the first of the two key encounters of his artistic life.

The encounter with love: The Swell Season

The fate that would lead to Glen's first artistic partnership began weaving its threads back in 2001: the Frames were invited to a music festival in the Czech Republic. The band's frontman met thirteen-year-old Markéta Irglová, daughter of the festival's organizer, whose precocious talent he was able to witness firsthand, along with her singing and remarkable multi-instrumental skills. Encouraged by her father, the girl had started playing piano at age 7 and guitar at 9, immediately showing extraordinary gifts.
A couple of years later the two began collaborating on and off, with Markéta appearing on stage with the band more than once. In 2005, as his time with the Frames was winding down, Glen founded The Swell Season together with her, and the duo played a number of live shows, mostly in the young musician's home country. Czech director Hřebejk took notice of them and asked them to record some songs for his film "Beauty in Trouble" (2006). The soundtrack features the first two songs co-written by the Swell Season ("Lies" and "Sleeping", which would later appear on their debut album) alongside two reworked Frames songs ("Star" and the famous "Falling Slowly").

Having severed ties with the band to which he had given everything, but with which his journey had now run its course, Glen began to savor his artistic freedom; from then on, his inspiration went hand in hand with his bond with Markéta, who for her part brought a neo-classical musical background to the table: in the meantime, the young multi-instrumentalist had also developed an innate talent for violin. Their romantic chemistry managed to magically reconcile two musical approaches that could hardly have been more different. The Swell Season's debut, the self-titled album released in 2006, is deeply steeped in a romantic vein; many of the singer-songwriter-style tracks are embellished with crystalline symphonic string and piano arrangements. Ten delicate love ballads, including new versions of "Falling Slowly" and "Lies". A defining stylistic feature of the many duets on the record is the gorgeous vocal polyphony between Markéta's high countermelody and Glen's ever-present main melody, lending the listening experience moments of deep emotional involvement. Also noteworthy is the gorgeous instrumental title track, a languid violin line over a deep piano loop, three minutes of pure magic.

The turning point came when John Carney, former Frames bassist and now an independent Irish filmmaker, called Glen Hansard to collaborate on the soundtrack for the film he had in mind, "Once". Glen brought Markéta on board; thanks to the film's extremely low budget, the two ended up taking on the lead roles themselves. The film that brought them together is clearly autobiographical in nature: a young Dubliner who repairs vacuum cleaners and makes ends meet busking on the street meets and falls for a single mother. She makes her living selling roses and magazines on the street, and from their encounter blossoms a delicate, fragile bond, steeped in deep mutual respect for each other's different life choices and diverging personal ambitions. Their special artistic collaboration wrapped up with the production of an album recorded together with other local buskers, before their paths parted once again. The theme of street music, of finding oneself through the lens of a kindred soul, drives a piece of fiction that clearly mirrors real life. Many scenes were shot live, without passersby's knowledge, some even inside Glen Hansard's own home. The film received glowing reviews from critics and unexpected box-office success. The soundtrack, released by Canvasback Music, an essential element of the film's storytelling, features the songs written and recorded by the duo during the shoot, including a couple of Frames tracks.

For the two of it, it was the beginning of a love story that would first lead them to play live some 250 times around the world in two years, and ultimately to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2008; if you want to spend three minutes of your time well, watch the genuine emotion on the faces of the two musicians as they're honored during the ceremony:

This is such a big deal, not only for us, but for all other independent musicians and artists that spend most of their time struggling, and this, the fact that we’re standing here tonight, the fact that we’re able to hold this, it’s just to prove no matter how far out your dreams are, it’s possible.
(Markéta Irglová)

Once again, the fiction of the big screen mockingly foreshadowed reality: Glen and Markéta's paths diverged - she now lives in Iceland, where she pursues her own musical project and is a mother of two. The Swell Season managed to leave behind a second album in 2009, Strict Joy, which follows in the footsteps of its predecessor but is tinged with a bittersweet, decaying flavor, much like their love story. Spin Magazine's review, while giving the album a positive verdict, states: "If Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová's roles in the hit Irish indie film 'Once' unwittingly wove the tale of their real-life romance, their second album as the Swell Season weaves the story of their falling out of it."

The confrontation with death

Once again, fate got ahead of itself in the Dublin artist's life. July 1st, 2000: at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, near Copenhagen, during Pearl Jam's performance, a tragic chain of events led to nine people being crushed to death at the foot of the stage, right before the band's eyes. That horrific event would forever mark Eddie Vedder's personal history, as he himself has repeatedly stated in later interviews (there was even talk of the band possibly breaking up, later denied). Ten years later, the Swell Season's concert at the Mountain Winery festival in Saratoga, California, was struck by a terrible tragedy: after climbing up the stage structure, a thirty-two-year-old man fell from more than seven meters, landing right next to Glen Hansard, who immediately dropped his guitar to try to administer first aid. Despite a doctor's intervention, nothing could be done for the young man.
Glen was devastated with grief: that horror had unfolded right before his eyes, and his help had been of no use. He couldn't sleep, but the following day his pain was eased by a phone call that would change his life: "That night was really heavy, and the next day I got a phone call - 'Hi Glen, I'm Eddie Vedder, I sing in a band called Pearl Jam, I just want to see how you're doing.' That call meant so much to me. He told me about Roskilde, about how badly he'd felt for months after that tragedy. We talked for over an hour. It was like some strange blessing was being born out of such a tragedy, and after that day he called me every day for four days straight, just to check in on me and spend some time on the phone with me."

A couple of months later Hansard was passing through Seattle with his Swell Season bandmates and had the chance to meet Eddie in person. The two spent a few days together, taking the opportunity to record the duet "Sleepless Nights" in the studio, which would later appear on "Ukulele Songs". Being invited to open for him on a few tour dates was simply the next step. In September 2011 the two found themselves sharing the same stage again during Pearl Jam's twentieth-anniversary celebrations held at Alpine Valley, near Chicago. First they enchanted the crowd with a poignant version of "Falling Slowly", then Glen duetted with Eddie on "Smile" during Pearl Jam's set and joined in as a backing vocalist for the Temple of the Dog reunion. They later went into the studio with Jack Clemons of the E Street Band to record a cover of "Drive All Night", sealing their mutual admiration once and for all.
The eternal dualistic clash between the opposing primal forces of love and death had struck again, this time showing its cruelest face, but the emotional bond forged through shared grief was transformed into positive energy: their live duets have always been marked by perfect chemistry, and Glen is still there, ready to follow Eddie to the ends of the earth.

The solo career

At the age of 42, Glen Hansard reached full artistic maturity and was ready to take flight as a solo artist. By then he had a decent fanbase, a high-caliber artistic background, and a solid deal with Anti – the label that had co-produced the second Swell Season LP. His first solo record, Rhythm And Repose, came out in 2012 and was an immediate success. The Dublin lad, freed from the partnerships that had enriched but also constrained his artistic path up to that point, could finally give free rein to his own inner inspiration; the musical coordinates are unmistakably retro, a tribute to his guiding lights Van Morrison and Cat Stevens. As in the best singer-songwriter tradition, the music is shaped and forged in service of refined, poetic lyrics, but the added value lies in the arrangements, which break free of the standard voice-and-guitar cliché thanks to carefully judged orchestral touches, rhythm sections that turn robust at times, and savvy production by the experienced Thomas Bartlett.
The album opens with the best duet on the record: a delicate ballad about hope, an invitation to keep going even when life turns against you in the most unthinkable and cruel ways. "Maybe Not Tonight" is the most expansive track of the whole set: a bucolic, intimate elegy on lost love and the difficulty of separation, the torment of memories that seal an indelible bond. His warm, delicate voice alternates with musical moments lit up by a crystalline, masterful lead guitar. From the start you can sense the artist's autobiographical intent, forever poised between depression, the fear of not making it (the pairing of "Bird Of Sorrow" and "The Storm, It's Coming"), and the certainty that positive energy can be drawn even from pain. In "Song Of Good Hope" and "High Hope" a strong cry of hope emerges, since the artist's priority remains sending a positive message out into the world. From his illuminating collaboration with Markéta, Glen absorbs touches of orchestral writing rooted in Mitteleuropean tradition, while in some vocal and musical surges you can hear the echo of The Frames at their best.

During this period he kept setting stages alight all over the world alongside some of the greatest rockers of all time: he had the honor of sharing the stage with Bruce Springsteen at the second Kilkenny date of the "Wrecking Ball World Tour," in a touching duet on Drive All Night, which also gives its title to his first EP, released in 2013 on the Los Angeles independent label Epitaph. The record's centerpiece is precisely that magical, intensely moving song lifted from The River, performed in a vibrant duet with his friend Eddie, while on sax none other than Jack Clemons, nephew of the legendary, late Big Man, takes the stage. All proceeds from digital sales of the single were donated to Little Kids Rock, the organization that provides music education to public school students and that Clarence Clemons personally supported. The EP, which we'd urge anyone who unfairly dismissed it to revisit, contains other gems of undeniable beauty: the following track, "Pennies In The Fountain," is a deeply moving, desperate plea for love. There's also room for a lovely return duet with Markéta and a touching a cappella lullaby.

In March 2015 came the second EP, It Was Triumph We Once Proposed… Songs Of Jason Molina: a painful, heartfelt tribute to a friend who became the protagonist of yet another bittersweet episode that marked the man and artist's life. Toward the end of the '90s, Glen Hansard discovered Jason's art, back when he went by the moniker Songs:Ohia; after hearing just one track, he decided to buy his self-titled debut LP. Riding the bus home after yet another gig, he listened to the whole album and was left in awe: "I was so moved by the strange nature of these Civil War songs, and this voice that seems to come from some ageless, timeless place [...] And I had no idea, was it old, was it new? Actually the cover gave no details at all, it was pretty plain."
The result of these reflections was a childlike, fan-like gesture: after finding a PO box printed on the back of the sleeve, he wrote him a letter full of sincere, heartfelt praise, certain he'd never hear back. Instead, the reply came just a few days later; from that moment on the two kept up an intense correspondence until they finally met in person, ending up jamming together more than once in Glen's kitchen. Those sessions produced an ill-fated split release credited to "Fade Street/A Caution To The Birds." Jason is an artist well worth rediscovering, one of those figures who got far less from the music world than he gave to it, an archetype of the modern antihero, who died in an anonymous Midwest apartment in 2013, aged just thirty-nine, a victim of alcoholism and of himself. Glen pays him the finest possible tribute, reworking five songs from his past in electric arrangements. The result is the most emotionally evocative achievement of the Irish artist's career, so expressive that in places it recalls the epic guitar rides of Neil Young. Glen's voice, potentially overpowering, is instead kept in balance, respectful of the originals, yet his natural vocal expressiveness brings out lyrics that reveal a surprising, deep inner search — a process that only rises and transcends itself by giving in to its irrational core: love.

The following LP, Didn't He Ramble, came out in 2015 and has the merit of defining ever more clearly the musical coordinates of Hansard the solo artist: a desire to return to his roots in popular music, with one eye on the great performers of his homeland and on the finest live performers from across the Atlantic, Bruce Springsteen and Eddie Vedder. It's a record that leaves plenty of room for instrumental elements: the violin coda on "McCormack's Wall" sets the rhythm of a Celtic village feast that serves as prelude to the album's standout, "Lowly Deserter": a blazing folk romp showing off bold orchestral string and brass writing that wouldn't be out of place at a Pete Seeger Session. Overall the record is solid, if perhaps a touch too workmanlike: there are still other fine moments ("My Little Ruin") and it's a pleasant, easy listen. A small step back from the debut, not helped by a production that's at times a little too glossy.

The EP A Season On The Line, released in 2016, reveals an unusual blues-rock streak in Glen, who even manages to reproduce, without forcing it, the voice of a seasoned Black bluesman. It's a pleasing first step toward a new stylistic evolution in Glen's solo career. Just four songs, as usual alternating between earth-to-air torpedoes, like the opening track, and fluttering impulses of pure delicacy ("Let Me In").

The next and final LP marks the artist's definitive emancipation from labels that had by then become too confining, those outdated musical stylistic markers that tied him to the Irish folk tradition. With Between Two Shores (2018), Glen Hansard completes the process of musical evolution begun with the previous EP. Where in the past every song began life as lyrics, now it's clear that the music itself is the underlying inspiration, supported by a production saturated with multicolored sounds and by orchestration of real weight and substance. The Dublin lad's vocal performances, full of emphasis and passion even in the studio, give the record at times the energy of a live show. The attempt mirrors that of the last, failed Frames album — translating the emotion of a concert onto record — but the approach is the opposite. The old attempt was built on a lo-fi logic of extreme sonic subtraction, meant to let the listener project themselves onto it; here instead we have a polished, meticulous work, where the emotional element comes from addition rather than subtraction. The lyrics often follow the real events in the songwriter's life, who had just ended a significant relationship. And yet we'd like to think of the aching, voice-and-guitar-only acoustic track "Moovin' On" as a tribute to Markéta (who contributes a brief backing-vocal cameo on "Your Heart's Not In It"). There's plenty of nostalgia mixed with anger, but also gratitude, in the splendid lines of the lyric:

Well if you’ve got blood in your heart
If you’ve got flesh on the bone
You should be playing your part here
Not rushing off all alone
We should be planning on a windfall
Instead of banging this drum
I’m tired of sitting around and waiting
I’m moving on

A pure rockabilly streak in the vocal and a deep, blues-rooted bassline are instead the ingredients of the superb opening track, which reaches its climax in a guitar solo over horns strongly reminiscent of the glory days of Belushi-Aykroyd. The album's masterpiece, "Wheels On Fire," has a funky Hammond intro that runs throughout the track, underpinning the finest vocal performance of Glen's career, in which he unleashes falsettos, spoken passages and vocal chiaroscuro that send shivers down the spine. Save for this webzine, the album hasn't so far been met with much enthusiasm from the music world, but as Glen Hansard's life has taught us, nothing is impossible — not even the chance that one day this record might still reach the heart of a wider audience.

Just over a year after the previous album came his fourth solo LP, preceded by the single "Fool's Game": a clear statement of intent from the artist, signaling a departure from the melodic indie-rock streaked with folk shadings that had defined his career up to that point. This Wild Willing (2019) should be filed under the classic "maturity statement"; the Irish songwriter finds just the right space to strip away every artistic superstructure and "offer himself wildly" to the listener, striking straight at the heart in a way few musicians manage to do these days. He does it by developing a wonderfully original, whispered, intimate songwriting style capable of embracing, in a single cosmic hug, elegant echoes of world music alongside surprising psychedelic drifts and dissonant codas. Hansard abandons easy melody and scales back the vocal flourishes that had been his trademark for years, in favor of an extraordinarily sophisticated, multicolored harmonic framework, steeped in ethnic instrumentation often set against carefully judged, dark, nocturnal piano chords.
The single, as mentioned, is a modern, heartfelt "praise of folly," seen as the sole engine of the primal feeling that governs everything; the hushed vocal, recalling latter-day Sufjan Stevens, unwinds over a delicate melodic backdrop of strings and brass before spilling into an unexpected cacophonous coda; but the surprises don't end there — at the close, a lovely cameo opens up from Iranian-born session musician Aida Shahghasemi, who performs a vocal shaped around a ghazal by fellow countryman poet Rami.
This is a record to be listened to in reverent silence, on a good sound system that lets you fully appreciate its defining trait: a masterful command of dynamics, meaning the way sound intensity is managed and graded within a single track — just listen to the memorable crescendo of "The Closing Door," which opens on a hushed synth bed and builds into a melodic progression that erupts into a riot of tribal rhythm and Middle Eastern-flavored instrumentation.
The record stands as the peak of Glen Hansard's musical career in terms of personality and courage, sealing a bond as original as it is effective: the fusion between the Anglophone singer-songwriter tradition always dear to the Dublin busker and the novelty of world music, understood in the broadest sense as the experimentation with ethnic musical contaminations foreign to the classic Western repertoire.

In October 2023 came Hansard's first post-pandemic album, All That Was East Is West Of Me Now, a convoluted title meant to capture a bitter realization: time slips inexorably through our fingers, passing with cruel mockery, and from a certain point on, for any human being there is more past than future. The Irish songwriter has always been credited with an innate talent for writing songs that are soft yet dense with anger, capable of raising goosebumps, and Glen hits the mark once again this time: when the achingly sweet "Sure As The Rain" kicks in, it's impossible not to be dazzled by such class: a waltzing gait, a voice tinged with Cohen, partly delivered in French, propped up by the grandeur of the strings.

The album takes off immediately, carried by an unexpectedly "rock" attitude, already evident on the opening "The Feast Of St. John" (featuring Warren Ellis on violin), but even more so on the following "Down On Our Knees," one of the most incisive electric rides Hansard has ever put to tape. The singer-songwriter vein soon makes room for itself, in the folk-oriented "There's No Mountain" (where Glen wears his best James Taylor suit) and in the one-two punch of "Between Us There Is Music" / "Ghost," which pushes the album's midsection toward a more meditative mood that, at times, flattens the listening experience. Glen pulls out of it gracefully thanks to the drive of "Bearing Witness," just before closing the record with the melancholy introspection of the epic crescendo on "Short Life" and handing the closing credits over to the very brief instrumental "Reprise".

After fifteen years of silence, another gripping chapter in the partnership with Markéta Irglová revives the Swell Season name. Forward is the third installment of a soap opera that still manages to captivate: the aching romanticism of "Stuck In Reverse," and the lush, irresistible two-voice dialogue of "People We Used To Be," remind us why we fell for the pair's old emotional escapades in the first place — after all, Glen and Markéta remain endearing even when they lay the tearjerking on thick. This record is, yes, the tale of a past lived dangerously on the edge of passion, but it's also a potential legacy for future generations — there's no other way to read the splendid "I Leave Everything To You," a minimal ballad for voice, piano and violin that underscores the renewed inspiration and maturity Markéta Irglová has reached. It's not the album's only little gem: the spiritual-blues scrape of "Great Weight," complete with horns, strings and a beefier instrumental section, digs deep and shows Glen Hansard at his best, breaking up Forward's solemn mood. In this melodramatic soap opera there's room for tiptoeing delicacy ("Pretty Stories"), ordinary yet oddly lovable songs ("A Little Sugar," "Factory Street Bells"), and a hymn to friendship that closes the album on solemn, elegiac, slightly mawkish tones, "Hundred Words," confirming Forward as a pleasant new chapter for The Swell Season.

Recorded at East Berlin's Funkhaus, Don't Settle Vol 1 – Transmissions East is the first installment of a two-part project, a potential hits collection but above all a vivid testament to the artist's live power. The album fully captures the force of Glen Hansard's performances; it's as if every note, every word, gains meaning as well as depth — like watching black-and-white photographs suddenly come alive in color. The biting version of "Fitzcarraldo," drawn from The Frames' repertoire, is exemplary in this sense: the muscular rhythm section adds pathos to the instrumental and vocal crescendo, while the violin lends a touch of dramatic, poetic emphasis — the same emphasis that, in a different register, animates "My Little Ruin," a melody poised between singing and whispering that, in a live setting, gains weight until it becomes positively incendiary.

On July 29, 2026, the terrible news arrived: Glen Hansard had died at the age of 56 in a motorcycle accident in the early hours of the morning in Lucan, on the outskirts of Dublin. A loss that leaves an unspeakable sense of emptiness. His charisma, the energy he unleashed at concerts — moments experienced as genuine liturgical acts of mutual devotion — will undoubtedly leave their mark on the history of contemporary music, standing even as a lesson for new generations of artists: to give more of themselves to their audience and, above all, to believe that nothing is impossible, if you truly want it.

Contributions by Claudio Lancia ("All That Was East Is West Of Me Now"), Gianfranco Marmoro ("Forward", "Don't Settle Vol 1, Transmission East")

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