Today, Jennifer shows us how far Glen Hansard has come from And And Fucking And. (I don’t have a long memory, I just happen to have re-watched The Commitments recently.)
You may be most familiar with Glen Hansard’s voice from his being half of The Swell Season, or perhaps from his appearing in and writing all the music for the movie Once, or, if you have a very long memory, from his smaller role in The Commitments. The Frames is his regular band, and this past Saturday night they made a stop at Terminal 5 as part of their 20th Anniversary Tour.
Glen Hansard, singing Disappointed
The Frames, if you don’t know them, are from Dublin, but unlike other Irish bands such as the Saw Doctors or the Pogues, they mostly don’t have a “traditional” sound. I say “mostly” because they do have Colm Mac Con Iomaire and his magnificent mournful violin winding through their big fuzzy guitars like a dark, shimmering ribbon.
Colm Mac Con Iomaire and Glen Hansard
I’ve actually been puzzling over how to describe them since the show, and “loud-soft-loud-hyperarticulate-howl-of-rage” would be accurate, but so would “spare, sharp, bittersweet and delicate romantic melodies.” For examples of these variations, see “Fake,” off of Burn the Maps and also “New Partner,” from The Roads Outgrown, respectively.
Joe Doyle
And, some news for established Frames fans: during one of their many encores (there were at least three!), Joe Doyle sang a song they had composed that day, which if the lyrics are anything to go by will probably be called “You Can’t Hide Your Love”. Or maybe “You Can’t Hide Your Love (For Someone Else)” since it was something of an elegy for the end of a love affair. In any case I hope they record it soon because I would like to listen to it about a million more times.