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The Swell Season

“Strict Joy”

October 2009; Anti Records

By Emily J Ramey

Click Here to See the Published Version on American Music Channel

Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova are an exquisite pair.  The two gathered public acclaim with their glowing performance in 2007′s indie Irish film musical Once.  Now performing regularly and internationally as The Swell Season, Hansard and Irglova exude lyrical and melodic luminosity.

With their contrasting vocal presences, The Swell Season’s new album Strict Joy alternates between a singularly desperate tone, like dashing through an airport after a woman because you just can’t lose her again, and a sweeping, magnetic quality, like a current oh-so-gently drifting you farther and farther away from land.  Together, their music is religious in same way as that long stretch in Central Park where the trees line either side and their branches meet creating a canopy of glorious green filtered light, and sad like finishing your favorite book for the fourteenth time.

Glen Hansard is reminiscent of his fellow Irishman Damien Rice with his ragged, pleading, passionate vocals, and Czech native Marketa Irglova’s hushed, delicate voice harmonizes nobly with Hansard’s like fine wine and cheese or scotch and a foreign cigar.

A few of Strict Joy’s standout tracks are “Low Rising,” with its raw soulfulness and smooth acoustics; “Feeling the Pull,” a galloping melody made memorable by its imperfect urgency and blazing instrumentation; “In These Arms,” with its subtle and old-world romantic lyrics like, “I quit my rambling and came home,/because maybe I was born to hold you in these arms;” Irglova’s solo piece, “Fantasy Man,” lilting and poetic, with lyrics like, “In the station, you were standing/Not knowing what you want,/And the secrets that we’re defending/Have become our only bond;” the ballad “I Have Loved You Wrong,” natural and tender, heart-wrenching and quiet; and “Back Broke,” which is slightly haunting with its minor tones and poignant simplicity.

Hansard and Irglova once enchanted us with their sweet harmonies on “Falling Slowly,” crooning together about melancholy hope and lovely possibility.  I still know those words by heart: “Take this sinking boat and point it home;/We’ve still got time./Raise your hopeful voice; you have a choice/You’ll make it now.”  I am happy to report that The Swell Season is still acoustic emotion at its very best.  Glen and Mar, as their fans have affectionately come to call them, radiate warmth and smoldering artistic intellect.  Strict Joy is an ideal soundtrack for a November afternoon.  Just relax and let the current pull you under.

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