"Falling Slowly" by The Frames

Glen Hansard is a talented cat, and falling slowly is a highly acclaimed song.  Glen is from Dublin and became popular in the states through the 2006 movie "Once," a film that is centered around two characters pursuit to make excellent music.  It's a really down to earth movie.  No far out unrealistic love stories, no big explosions, no solid feel-good conclusions...maybe it's a lot like life.  Since then, he has been collaborating with fellow "Once" star Marketa Irglova with an act called "The Swell Season."

All of that stuff is great, but I love the story behind Glen's first band, "The Frames."  Apparently at age 13 Glen dropped out of high school and started playing music on the streets of Dublin.  While Hansard was working as a street performer he was scraping up enough money to get some recording time for a demo.  After he was able to scrape together enough change he made 50 copies of that first demo, it worked its way into the right peoples hands, and Glen got a deal with Island Records in 1990.  So, Glen formed "The Frames" and they started rocking all over the UK.  Even if you have heard "Falling Slowly" in the movie or with Marketa, give it a shot with "The Frames" for a little more rock and roll.  Hansard has a powerful voice, and sings with a lot of grit and truth.

This past year I got to spend an awesome weekend at the legendary Newport Folk Festival, and the "Swell Season" was one of the closing acts of the festival.  The set was good, but I got distracted by a buzz surrounding "Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros" so I only caught half of their set, but i thought they were sweet.  All weekend at the event security kept making people in the front sit down, not get too crowded, and clear the aisles. Basically all the stuff you would expect security to do, but it was a folk festival not punk music where kids are trying to release the rage by punching each other in the face, so everybody was pretty chill and just wanted to get a little closer to the music.  Anyway, show after show the guards sent people away, and then during Glen's act he stopped mid-song, publicly humiliated the security guards and pleaded that people stay up front and keep jamming.  Who knows if they'll get invited back, but they won over a couple thousand fans.



Enjoy, I'd love to hear your SOTD