His plaintive violin playing will be familiar to fans of The Frames and Swell Season. Now Colm Mac Con Iomaire has finally gotten around to recording a solo album.
The Swell Season is, as I read it anyway, the sound of people breaking each other’s hearts (and balls) slowly, with no cutaways to spare us the graphic bits.
The Swell Season have confirmed the release of their new album, Strict Joy, which will hit racks here on September 25 – a few weeks later than originally mooted.
The Swell Season play their final gig of the year in Vicar Street on December 8, with special guests just announced including Mundy and Liam O'Maonlai.
Already confirmed to play Dublin and Belfast in the coming months, Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova's will now play extra dates in Letterkenny, Cork and Galway.
Academy Award-winners Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova stop being huge in America long enough to play the Dublin Olympia this December, with another date just added.
One of the highlights of The Frames recent showcase gigs in Vicar Street, ‘Sleeping’ is evidence enough of how great a songwriter Glen Hansard can be. As a moment of startling beauty, this collaborative effort with Irglova harks back to The Frames frontman’s For The Birds era. In particular his wounded evocative vocal brings to mind the opening minutes of ‘Santa Maria’ or ‘The Mighty Sword’. Irglova’s contribution is to paint a haunting almost cinematic backdrop to Hansard’s lovers lullaby leaving us with a stunning piece of music. Forthcoming album The Swell Season may well prove something of an unexpected career highpoint.
Winning an oscar was a culmination of a life-time's struggle for GLEN HANSARD. But success extracted a heavy toll on the singer, plunging him into self doubt and leaving him feeling confused and adrift. As The Swell Season prepare to release their second album, he talks about the long road back to sanity, his romantic break-up with songwriting partner MARKETA IRGLOVA and why, having derided Ireland in the press, he’s now proud of his home country
again. Plus Irglova talks about the end of their love affair and the challenges that fame and Fortune bring.
Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova and The Pogues have been officially confirmed for Oxegen, along with the full day-by-day schedule for the July festival.
In an exclusive interview, Once stars Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova talk about the love affair that sneaked up on them, recall their Oscar-winning adventures, give us the inside track on the movie's remarkable success and explain what it's like to hang out with the Coen brothers for an evening.
Check out our exclusive live gallery of The Swell Season & Martha Wainwright's performance at the Orpheum Theatre, Boston on November 21. Photos by Shawn Lynch.
Mick Flannery is just one of the top artists featured singing a track on Seachtain na Gaeilge’s Irish language compilation Ceol ’09, due for release next month. Jackie Hayden talks to him about the experience.
It was a well deserved triumph for bloody-minded independence when Glen Hansard lifted the Oscar for 'Best Original Song', with his Swell Season partner Marketa Irglova at his side.
Get ready for a whole new kind of weird as avant-gardists THE SUMMER EXPERIMENT prepare to hit the live circuit, touting a unique mix of folk, indie and classical.
They suffered a backlash following their late '90s hit 'Popular', but Nada Surf have rebounded in style. Singer Matthew Caws talks about the thin line between success and failure.
The Saw Doctors, one of Ireland's most enduring acts are back in the frame. Their To Win Just Once, The Best Of The Saw Doctors album has debuted at No.3 in the Irish album charts.
Indie-hit Once director John Carney talks to Tara Brady about how to make an Irish musical, while star Glen Hansard confesses he was pleasantly surprised at the film’s success.
Mac Con Iomaire may have started out as part of the Kila collective, but his range runs well beyond the Celtic pastoral and into the post-rock, the ambient and the neo-classical.
The organisers of Oxegen '08 have revealed that the three day festival is now completely sold out. Plus, they've announced the day by day line-up so far...
Amanda Byram was today unveiled as the host of this year’s Meteors Awards and nominees for 2009 were revealed - as well as the fact that Sharon Shannon would receive a lifetime achievement award.
The Electric Picnic couldn’t have been any more inspiring (weather excepted). Now, roll on the Music Show....
Electric Picnic. It marks the end of the summer, and the beginning of the academic year when people start to trudge back to schools and college. It is a moment when you start to anticipate the darkness falling down around us, the days getting shorter and then shorter again, till the watershed weekend arrives when the clocks go back, and the winter comes stealing in.
The first day of The Music Show saw some hot debates, great music and Glen Hansard in stirring form.
Reporting: Peter Murphy, Celina Murphy, Niall Stokes, Stuart Clark and additional Hot Press reporters
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Music Review | Live
20% | 7 Sep 2006
They said it couldn’t be done, but this year’s Electric Picnic achieved the impossible by being even more joyous, vibey and action-packed than its predecessors. Hot Press was in the thick of things as 200 acts and 30,000 music lovers descended on one very big house in the country.
