Hollywood beginnings, eh? Two years after a low-budget indie movie propelled long-battling Frames frontman Glen Hansard and his then-girlfriend Marketa Irglova to begrudger-fucking Oscar glory and Simpsons-level celebrity status, they return with a second Swell Season album (the Once soundtrack hardly counts). It’s no secret that they’re no longer romantically involved, so it’s hard to interpret this collection of 12 songs as anything other than a musical retelling of their relationship break-up.
Titled after an old James Stephens poem, and recorded in the Connecticut studio of Interpol producer Peter Katis, Strict Joy is a decidedly heartache-singed 50 minutes of music. It’s not strictly joyless – gorgeously lush strings, acoustic guitars and overdubbed harmonies regularly lift the spirit – but it’s still a pretty downbeat listening experience. Hardly surprising. Hansard has always lyrically mined the depths of his heartaches, but here it seems he’s writing in real time.
It opens with the angst-ridden, Van Morrison-influenced ‘Low Rising’: “I want to sit you down and talk/ I want to pull back the veils/ And find out what I’ve done wrong.” The problem is evident by the second song, ‘Feeling The Pull’: “And I’m feeling the pull/ Dragging me off again.” By the third track, ‘In These Arms’, he’s succumbed: “You were restless/ I was somewhere less secure/ So I went running to the road.”
It continues in this confessional, introspective, tortured and torn vein throughout. Forgiveness comes halfway through, but the fall-out continues. Irglova handles lead vocal duties on ‘Fantasy Man’ (co-written with Hansard), her delicate and fragile voice giving real emotional resonance to the lines: “So go on now, you are forgiven/ Let’s put it down to life/ The story of two lovers/ Who danced both edges of the knife.” Later, though, in the self-penned ‘I Have Loved You Wrong’, she seems to accept her own share of responsibility: “Forgive me lover/ For I have sinned/ For I have done you wrong.”
Whatever about their romantic chemistry, their vocal chemistry is beautifully cathartic (‘High Horses’, ‘Two Tongues’). There isn’t a bum track here, it all fits together perfectly, the melancholic tale of a bittersweet parting of the ways. While breaking no new ground musically, this is a warm and deeply intimate record, a true and heartfelt work of art, but absolutely impossible to separate from the Glen-Marketa story. En-joy.