Rusty never sleeps. Somewhere between Frames tours and recording dates, not to mention collaborating with one-time bandmate turned filmmaker John Carney, Glen Hansard has teamed up with Czech singer and pianist Marketa Irglova to bring forth this little extracurricular baby.
But The Swell Season is more than just a holistic digression. It’s essentially a quietist’s concerto for voice, keys, cello and violin, and the combined effect of both talents is somewhat akin to – of all things – Damien and Lisa’s baroque chamber folk.
Mind you, the swelling in the title could refer to the bruising incurred by emotional assault and battery as much as images of rivers bursting their banks. It’s not exactly news that Hansard does hollowed out and heartsick in forensic detail, and ‘In The Arms Of This Low’, ‘Sleeping’ and ‘Falling Slowly’ are strewn with the detritus left behind when sweethearts depart, leaving in their wake perfumed airs, scratched records and love letters that read like depositions.
No problem there – I like my Ramones to be the Ramones and my Nico to be Nico, and I don’t ask of either that they masquerade as the other. Just don’t be fooled by Glen’s hushed delivery, Ms Irglova’s aching tones, or strings courtesy of Marja Tuhkanen and Bertrand Galen. Here’s a ringside seat at a counselling session for a love affair that’s way beyond salvaging. Recriminations abound (“How in the world did you come to be such a lazy love?”; “You won’t disappoint me/I can do that myself”; “The truth has a habit of falling out of your mouth”) and while tunes like ‘Drown Out’ and ‘Lies’ are immaculately turned out for the parlour recital, their inherent vicious ironies are straight from the last reels of Huston’s The Dead or Scorsese’s Age Of Innocence. After its fashion, this record is as explicit as anything engineered by Steve Albini, with ‘Leave’ being amongst the most livid vocal performances Hansard has committed to tape thus far.
For all the melancholic airs, the principal difference between the main Frame – or for that matter Mic Christopher or Damien Rice – and their many imitators (you don’t need me to name the names any more than I want to write them) is one crucial element: a heated coil of anger that prickles under the skin of the music like low-level radiation.
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.