Album Review

There are many ways for musical artists to break it big these days, but winning an Academy Award might be the most unorthodox of all. That’s the path that Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova took. Hansard, popular in Ireland as the leader of the Frames but with no face time stateside, and Irglova, a young Czech singer, hooked up to star in the indie film Once two years ago, and the rest is history.

Now, recording as the Swell Season, the duo have recorded their follow-up, Strict Joy. In the interim between the Governor’s Ball and now, Hansard and Irglova got romantically involved and uninvolved, and that seems to have provided plenty of fodder for the songs here.

Musically, they don’t stray much from the formula they perfected on Once: a mixture of tender, somewhat bleak ballads and slow-building mid-tempo tracks that always emphasize the unique harmonies of the pair. Hansard sings powerfully, almost too powerfully, as if he’s in danger of going off the rails, while Irglova’s gentle trill, so delicate on its own, somehow rises to the occasion when in tandem with her partner.

The lone exception on the album to these templates is the opener, “Low Rising,” which is pretty much all Hansard vocally, although Irglova’s circling piano fills are prominent as it rides some horns to a soulful Van Morrison groove. Its ambling nature isn’t emblematic of the intensity to come the rest of the way, but it’s an effective palette-cleanser nonetheless.

From there we’re plunged deep into a crumbling relationship, with all of the attendant rage and regret. Hansard isn’t afraid to get blunt and nasty in his lyrics (Take the line “If you stay with that a**hole/He’s going to do you harm” from “In These Arms”), but he gets away with it because he often has Irglova joining him in harmony on these bitter bombs, making it seem like both sides are getting equal time. It’s like a two-person Rumours, albeit without that landmark album’s consistency.

Irglova deserves credit for her improved contributions. I thought her efforts on Once were pretty but weightless, but she’s dialed in on her two leads on this album. “I Have Loved You Wrong” is especially fine, a gorgeous concoction full of tenderness and remorse.

Hansard, on the other hand, takes a while to really hit his stride. None of his songs are poor by any means, but it’s not until the second half of the record that any of them strike with the same kind of power and immediacy as on Once. It finally comes with “The Verb,” which marries twitchy guitars and uneasy verses to an absolutely breathtaking chorus that’s reminiscent of the swirling pop of Sufjan Stevens. Later on, he nails “Two Tongues,” which couches its hostility in those marvelous harmonies. Alas, that momentum is blunted by album-closer “Back Broke,” one of a couple slow songs that get bogged down in their own melancholia.

Hansard and Irglova have definitely lucked into a musical partnership that can elevate even mediocre songs into something worth hearing. They just have to trust their ability to branch out, both in terms of musical style and subject matter, more than they do on Strict Joy. If they do, they won’t need any unlikely Hollywood hits to get their music to the masses.

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