Cate’s Musings

I was lucky enough to be at the sold out Swell Season show at the El Rey last night. The Swell Season, otherwise known as Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, are the two leads from the movie “Once“. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, do what you can to track it down while it’s still playing. It’s one the simplest, most perfect films I’ve seen in a long time. You gotta love a movie where the two leads don’t even have names, they’re simply “Guy” and “Girl” in the credits. The movie was written around the songs on an album Glen & Marketa recorded a few years back (with a few new ones thrown in).

The show was unbelievable. It helped that Eric Bachmann (pictured above) was the opening act. He played a short, mellow set. I’ve seen him play a more rockin’ show in the past, and while I prefered the rockin’ version, the mellow one was great too.

When The Swell Season took the stage the audience went nuts. It’s funny what a movie can do for musicians – it seemed that lots of the crowd wasn’t necessarily regular indie rock concert goers but rather fans who’d discovered the band because of the movie. I didn’t know of this album before the movie came out, but I am a fan of The Frames, Hansard’s regular band. I discovered them about 4 years ago when they opened for Calexico (at the El Rey as well). Hansard talked about this briefly, saying how strange it was that he’s been slogging away in bands for 17 years hoping that people might start paying attention someday but that he never expected the recognition to come in the way that it has. I say it’s all good news as long as people are listening!

Anyhow, to get back to the show: They were simply fantastic. All the songs sounded amazing with “Leave” being a real show stopper. They played a slew of songs from the movie, even “Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy”. And they performed 2 covers, both of which were really quite perfect. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard their version of “Cactus” by the Pixies (my friend Morgan and I could NOT get over it – we were like giddy school girls), and their version of Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” which was equally moving, but obviously for entirely different reasons.

Also, just in order to make sure everyone was aware they were at a really really great show they had Damien Rice come out and do a song. Not with them, just on his own. It was pretty great actually, to see them just walk off stage and let Rice do his thing. The first time The Swell Season came through LA they were opening for Rice and it seems they’re fast friends. A great pairing, if you ask me.

And if I haven’t had enough glowing things to say about last night’s performance, I leave you with this tidbit that another friend of mine at the show said to me:

“Oh you totally should have waited out front with us! They just played a mini-show for a guy who stopped them out front to tell them he loves them but that he didn’t have a ticket and couldn’t get in”.

No joke. Apparently, when Hansard heard this he pulled out his guitar and played for the guy standing there on the street. Now if that isn’t great, I don’t know WHAT is! Best part: according to a comment on their MySpace page, the nice people at the El Rey ended up giving tickets to the stragglers who couldn’t get in. Call me corny, but I love stories like that.

You can watch or listen to their recent performance on KCRW here, it’s quite nice. And I just now found this full concert on NPR that you can podcast.

**Edit: if you want to read about the The Swell Season at the Wiltern take a look at my follow up to this post – it can be found here.**