The Swell Season - Strict Joy

After a long break from writing, I've been inspired to come back by lots of great new music this fall. Partially, this is due to my rediscovery of the revamped music website Lala.com. They have a great new program for discovering and legitimately purchasing new music. You'll see links to various songs now in the blog - you can go to lala and stream the songs one time for free. hope you enjoy!

There are certain albums that - when i turn them on for the subway trip to work in the morning - allow me to make a lot of progress on whatever book or magazine I'm reading that day. The new album Strict Joy by The Swell Season is not one of those albums.

I have loved this duo's (Irish Singer Glenn Hansard, and Czech Pianist Marketa Irglova) music since seeing them in the indepdendant film Once, music they wrote about falling in love while making the movie (which is about two musician's falling in love and making music together). It was a real thrill to watch them reach critical and commercial success (eventually winning the 2008 Oscar for best song with "Falling Slowly") since I wrote about watching the movie way back in December 2007. It is a very touching story, and their music, peopled by heart-on-sleeve lyrics and soaring arrangements punctuated by alternately jarring and lulling acoustic guitar can seem overblown at times, but is always affecting.


listen to the album here:


It came as a surprise then, to hear first, that the couple had broken up, and second, that they had decided to continue on as a musical collaboration. If the soundtrack to Once is about their journey of falling in love, Strict Joy is about falling out of it. This is not a breakup album on the order of Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, a one-sided, sometimes-snarling, sometimes-regretful postmortem on a relationship probably doomed from the beginning. This is a balanced view from the inside of a couple that obviously cared deeply for each other and tried desperately to make it work. Even the moments where accusations are made come off with an uncanny tenderness, possibly because the accusee is harmonizing so beautifully even as the accusation is being leveled. There is still love here, even if it only lives on in the music.