A Swell Season of Joy

Once was not nearly enough.

I don’t recall when or how I first discovered the music of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, but I do remember falling quickly for their sound well in advance of the movie that would catapult the seemingly shy duo into the spotlight. “Once,” the low-budget 2007 film—a modern musical, really—starring Hansard (frontman for the Irish band The Frames) and Irglova (classically trained Czech pianist and vocalist), added layers of context to the soundtrack I had been listening to repeatedly, daily, for some time, only increasing my evangelical crusade to convert everyone I knew into fans.

The duo’s soundtrack, like the movie itself (which gracefully blurred the line between fiction and reality), is a simple, raw expression of universal human emotions, an outpouring of honesty and passion—through a folksy style that emanates from a guitar, piano, poetic lyrics, and blend of soaring and soft vocals—that never even comes close to plummeting off the cliff into that vast ocean of sentimental crap, veering instead toward the rare terrain of natural beauty.

It’s been unclear in the years since “Once” earned Hansard and Irglova widespread acclaim and accolades (including an Oscar for best original song) whether their collaboration would spawn another album, though regular touring, festival performances and the occasional recorded tease (like the duo’s rousing cover of Bob Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” for the “I’m Not There” soundtrack) kept hope alive. A strange species of an album and a film, neither ever seem to age, even with the repeated use that would usually land most in the “played-out” heap. Yet still, “Once” was not enough.

Luckily for us, “Once” was not enough for them either. Hansard and Irglova are back, as The Swell Season, with an album of 12 new, original songs set for release on October 27. “Strict Joy”, as the album is titled, takes its name from a work by Irish poet James Stephens. (Read the poem here.) The songs, according to the band’s announcement of the forthcoming album, “were recorded last year and document a time of great change.” Though we’ll have to wait another couple of months for the album, Hansard and Irglova offered a taste of what to expect when they recently performed a few stripped-down versions during a Tiny Desk Concert session. As NPR’s Stephen Thompson explained in the introduction to the performance, “the gigantic keyboard we’d provided would have been far more suitable had Irglova been a member of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, so they opted to scrap it and huddle up around Hansard’s battered acoustic guitar.” That, coupled with the small space, resulted in an informal, befittingly intimate performance, playing twice as many songs as the typical Tiny Desk set.

Want to see them perform in person? The Swell Season will announce plans for a North American tour on Tuesday, September 8 (with presale tickets for most shows available the following day). You can also download recent concerts at PlayedLastNight.com.

The Joy of Phish

Phish also wants you to be happy this fall. After disbanding in 2004, to the shock of many of its fans (or phans), Phish reunited for a three-night stand at Hampton Coliseum in Virginia, followed by a major summer tour. Typically referred to as a “jam band,” Phish transcends rigid genre classifications, touching on many disparate influences and exploring a wide range of styles (elements of jazz, blues, rock, classical, folk, bluegrass, among others) over the course of an album or live performance—and even during a single song. But the jam-band label is not totally inaccurate. Phish, often described as a cultural descendent of the Grateful Dead, is best appreciated live, thanks to an anything-goes, no-two-shows-are-alike atmosphere that the band’s playful musical meanderings and immaculate improvisations create. The consequence of that assessment, however, is that Phish’s studio albums (iTunes, Amazon)—despite their brilliance—have been shunned, especially by die-hard followers, in favor of live recordings.

The comeback would not be complete without a studio album—this time trying to blend the best of both worlds. The band’s eleventh album, as Trey Anastasio told Rolling Stone, “feels more like a live record than a lot of our live records.” Many of the album’s 10 tracks made their way into sets throughout the summer, including both headlining performances (Friday and Saturday nights) at Bonnaroo. Phish had never played the festival, though the band’s own legendary multi-day camping extravaganzas paved the way for the likes of Bonnaroo and others. And the fact that Phish’s reunion tour would be stopping for a few days at Bonnaroo induced me to make my own first-time trek to the Tennessee festival, and both three-hour performances were electric and otherworldly. From the several new songs I heard live, and others that I’ve caught snippets of, “Joy” will certainly have fans smiling. Along with the new album, Phish is staging its eight festival, called Festival 8, in Indio, California, which will consist of eight sets over three days, including the band’s tradition of donning a “musical costume” on Halloween night.

“Joy” is out next week, on September 8, but if you pre-order the album from Phish Dry Goods you’ll be automatically entered to win a travel package to Festival 8, including air-fare, hotel and tickets for two. Phish is also offering a “super deluxe Joy Box”: the album (and a free MP3 download of “Joy” since the box will be shipped a few weeks after its release date); a complete second album titled “Party Time”; an extensive hard-bound booklet; 1o individual limited edition posters (designed by a different artist for each of the album’s ten songs); and a DVD of summer performances (including Bonnaroo and the tour’s opening night at Fenway Park). Like I said, they, as the lyrics of the title track proclaim, “want you to be happy.” And if you can’t wait until next week, Phish is now streaming the entire album on MySpace.

Pearl Jam, notable—as is Phish—for its longevity and dedicated fan base, is back as well this month with the release of its first album since 2006’s “Pearl Jam.” Available on September 20 at iTunes, Target and independent music stores (read more about the band’s decision to release the new music on its own, without a major label), “Backspacer” consists of 11 songs in an economical 37 minutes. “‘Backspacer’ is the leanest and meanest Pearl Jam album yet,” writes Jonathan Cohen in Billboard magazine. By all accounts, as several tracks have debuted—some in concert, another on the first episode of “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien”—in the buildup to the release date, Pearl Jam’s ninth studio album might just rank as one of its best—a major feat for a band with classics like “Ten,” “Vs.,” and “Vitalogy” in its 20-year oeuvre.

As an added bonus, those who purchase the CD or 180-gram vinyl LP get a hard-bound book-style jacket or a 24-page full-sized, full-color booklet, respectively, featuring original artwork from Tom Tomorrow, who also contributed the album’s cover art. Notice, by the way, the lettering: typewriter keys! As much as I’d like to take credit for inspiring such a design (see blog masthead, after all), it’s a reflection on the album’s title: “an homage to an oddly named typewriter key that fell out of fashion 50 years ago,” writes Cohen:

The frontman, who still uses typewriters for lyric writing and personal correspondence, says he got upset when he saw vintage typewriter keys being used as jewelry. “For me it was like shark fin soup: ‘You’re killing typewriters for a bracelet!’ ” he says.

Any writer who still appreciates the lure of typewriters, like myself, has to find this admirable. The first single off “Backspacer” is available ahead of the album’s release. “The Fixer” has also given us a live-performance video, directed by none other than Cameron Crowe—the once teenage rock journalist (as he chronicled in his Oscar-winning film, “Almost Famous”), who harkened back to those early days when he wrote a Rolling Stone cover story about Pearl Jam in 1993 as the band worked on the follow-up to its widely successful debut album.

Pearl Jam recently headlined the Outside Lands festival in San Francisco and will play shows to support the release of “Backspacer” in their hometown Seattle, Vancouver, Portland, Salt Lake City, and Universal City, Calif., before arriving in Austin for another headlining gig on Oct. 4 at the Austin City Limits Music Festival, where, I’m excited to say, I’ll be among the crowd for my second Pearl Jam concert.

Certainly not a household name like either of the two aforementioned bands, Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quinetro, as Rodrigo y Gabriela, introduced themselves to the music world with the release of their self-titled album in 2006, which includes instrumental reworkings of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” and Metallica’s “Orion.” As most reviewers have indicated, their sound is difficult to define, but Thom Jurek describes it quite accurately in his review of “Rodrigo y Gabriela”:

These nine cuts have nothing to do with nuevo flamenco or any of that new agey stuff: this is smoke and fire music, it burns across genres and traditions like a demented passion spirit that takes no prisoners—and we can thank the gods for heavy metal in this instance at least. This set slashes like a stiletto; it’s fine and precise; it leaves no scars. The dynamic range of this music is startling. It is both ancient and futuristic, carnally frenetic and romantically seductive, artfully—and even spiritually—played yet drenched in the vulgarity of street life. It is the work of two young masters who are still striving to learn and incorporate more without sacrificing beauty, pathos, and tradition.

Somewhat surprisingly, their live performances (just the two of them and their acoustic guitars) are just as fiery and mesmerizing, even in the seemingly oversized, open-field venue of the main stage at Bonnaroo, as I experienced them back in June. After issuing a live album last year, the Mexican guitar duo (by way of Ireland)—former members of a heavy metal band—returned to the studio with their acoustic guitars in Ixtapa, Mexico, creating 11 original instrumental compositions (no covers this time) for their much-anticipated follow-up to “Rodrigo y Gabriela.” Due out on September 8, “11:11″ pays tribute to those musicians who have inspired the duo along their journey—a different master inspiring each of the 11 tracks, from Carlos Santana, Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd to Paco De Lucia and Zakir Hussain.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
What forthcoming albums are you excited about hearing? What upcoming concerts do you plan to attend? Leave a comment and let us know.