The Swell Season

On The Swell Season’s newest album, Strict Joy, life influences the art of its band members, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. Listeners will recognize this band from the movie Once; Hansard portrays a struggling busker and Irglova an immigrant who spend a week together in Ireland, falling in love and creating music which chronicles that love. After the release of the movie (and subsequent Oscar win for Best Song – “Falling Slowly”), art imitated life: Hansard and Irglova became lovers – who then broke up. Strict Joy is that story.

Named after a work of the same name by poet James Stephen, the album is the result of channeled and combined heartache. Hansard takes lead vocal on the majority of the tracks, with Irglova and other musicians providing background vocals (though Irglova sings lead on two songs). The instrumentation is fairly simple throughout – he on his guitar, she on her piano – with smatterings of drums and string sections.

“Let’s put it down to life / The story of two lovers / Who danced both edges of the knife,” Irglova sings delicately on “Fantasy Man.” And so they do. The album opens with “Low Rising,” a song seemingly influenced by Eric Clapton or Van Morrison – it’s slow, with jam and jazz elements.  “Feeling The Pull” follows – an upbeat song with an almost Celtic feel, which is only enhanced by Hansard’s desperate vocals. He sounds even more on edge in “The Verb,” with its frantic guitar and bass. He sings, “All joy escaped in the dark / And I can’t make this make sense / Your thoughts are lost to me now / I cannot take it, I’m out.”

Irglova follows with “I Have Loved You Wrong.” Her diminished, gentle vocals are what really carry this song, amidst sparse piano and other instruments. The album ends on “Back Broke” – if this was a story depicted on the screen, then Hansard’s been through a personal war. Though this song features a beautiful Spanish guitar solo, his vocals are considerably quieted, as if he’s truly given all he has.

In the end, it’s almost pleasing to see (and hear) that the duo could work through such a wretched emotional time. As its namesake poem reminds us, “…and we cared naught that these were mournful things / For, caring them, we made them beautiful.”