The Swell Season, "Make art, make art!"

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Covering the crossroads of music and film.

Indie Ear is written by Brandon Kim. Drop him a line at indieear (at) ifc dot com

By Brandon Kim on 09/02/2009

The Swell Season are Glen Hansard (from Irish band, The Frames) and Marketa Irglova (a classically trained Czech pianist and vocalist). They entered the spotlight last year with two Grammy nominations and an Oscar win for Best Original Song, "Falling Slowly." That win was for the indie film, "Once," for which Hansard and Irglova also composed the score along with the original soundtrack work. They played the film's two lead characters too!

(The Swell Season's, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova).

If you missed their Oscar speech/debacle you missed the feel good moment of the season. Thanks to the Academy you can relive it and swoon over the wonderfully sincere and clearly deserving duo. They're kind of people I actually want to see speak at the Oscars outside of Jon Stewart (and Viggo Mortensen who's in the background, feeling it big time).

Their new album Strict Joy, takes its name from a poem by Irish writer James Stephens (1882-1950). It was co-produced by Hansard and Peter Katis (The National, Interpol). In addition to members of The Frames, the album features guitarist Javier Mas (Leonard Cohen). Check out the first track, "Low Rising," from the forthcoming album right here.

"Low Rising," by The Swell Season.

Download Low Rising from IFC!

The Swell Season will tour the U.S. this fall, dates to be announced soon. The album comes out Oct 27th, 2009 on ANTI-.

Tags: film scores, Glen Hansard, Marketa Irglova, Oscars, The Swell Season

loves it

great song!

Jason McArthur

great track......sweet groovy soulful love groove

shirley painter

been following you since 2007 and i feel all your songs in my soul.. the movie "once" hit me hard in my heart and i will always remember the message it sent to me.... thank you ....

Callie

Wow, Love the lyrics. First song since a bad break up I can listen to and want to now play my guitar again and sing this. Beautiful writing.

James Breasted

Please consider coming to our wonderful little venue here in Carbondale, Colorado, called "Steve's Guitars", or else to the Paradise Theater in nearby Paonia, Colorado. Ask some of your friends in the music business and they will tell you that both Steve's and the Paradise are wonderful places to play. You play now easily to audiences of a thousand, but please consider playing in some small towns with audiences of less than a hundred - less than fifty even. There is a lot of soul here in Carbondale. We just had John Gorka and also Lucy Kapalinsky who both loved playing here to small audiences. If you play to a big audience in Denver, please consider coming up here into the mountains for a gig. It would be like playing with a small group at your mom's house just as you did in "Once"!!!

Sylvia LaFrance

oooooo ah :-)

josh

amazing song from start to finish
solo is perfectly crafted and oh so tasty

Kat

Heard this song on WXPN 88.5 last night, loved it and hunted it down. Please add to your My Space player soon.

tom albert

heard this song on sirius 18 I like it Man do i like it

Covering the crossroads of music and film.