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The Swell Season

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  • 02-05-2006 10:21am
    #1
    RE*AC*TOR
    Registered Users Posts: 7,482 ✭✭✭


    Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova

    Well just picked up this album at the weekend. The GF is a big frames fan, so we picked it up in HMV. I was really into the frames circa Fitzcarraldo and Dance The Devil, less so For The Birds, and even less so Burn The Maps (the nadir imo).

    We've been to tonnes of their concerts over the years. Some great, some crap. But the most recent one was a surprising return to form. They didn't rehash all the old stuff, they played a set nearly entirely of new material and they played it viscerally. Things were looking up.

    Imagine my surprise when a lot of that material was released in an album shared with an unknown Czech singer/pianist - Irglova.

    It works though. It really works. To an extent I think that the piano/guitar/cello/viola thing is a natural setting for most of the post-Dance the Devil material. This gentle, beautiful music would be a great foil for a return to visceral Frames albums. That at least is my hope.

    Anyway, to this album - its certainly a great improvement from Burn the Maps (i hate the song "Fake"). It is probably most reminiscent of Damien Rice's O, but with a more somber tone.

    Its good enough to go on my mp3 player, which is the first time in a while I would have thought that of material eminating from that most loved and reviled of Irish artists. Good man Glen! Now keep it up with the next Frames album (scheduled for september), but don't let this be a one off!


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    #2
    elduggo
    Closed Accounts Posts: 546 ✭✭✭elduggo


    agree with all of that. Frames have lost their way over the past while, but I was both pleasantly and greatly surprised by how good this album is.


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    #3
    John
    Registered Users Posts: 12,135 ✭✭✭✭John


    I hate the Frames and normally I hate Glen Hansard by default but I really like this album. I heard it a few weeks ago (granted it was unmixed at the time) and I thought it was a Low record! Needless to say I was gobsmacked when I heard it was Glen Hansard. Snapped it up when it came out.


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