Oscar-Winning Duo on breakup + new music

It's been a heady couple of years for Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, the folk-pop duo of Swell Season. Since starring in the 2007 hit film Once and winning Best Original Song Oscar for "Falling Slowly" from the soundtrack, the Irishman and the Czech singer/pianist have had professional highs and personal lows – from an appearance on The Simpsons, to the demise of their romance.

Was there some thought of not making another album after your relationship ended?

Yeah, there was a good period of `Let's have a think about this. Is this the end of this band?' It's important to remember that we were mates a lot longer than we were romantic. It wasn't a huge stretch to go back to being mates ... I do genuinely love playing music with Mar and can't think of anyone else in the world that I would rather be travelling around and singing with.

How did your collaborations on these tunes work?

It was mostly myself writing the songs, just by virtue of the fact that myself and Mar were spending less time together. Her opinion is the one I trust the most, so we're definitely still very connected on that level, but in terms of the actual physics of writing the songs – she writes her songs, I write mine.

What's your approach to composition?

I try not to do that thing people talk about where they wake up in the morning and make coffee and sit in front of a pen and wait. I believe that's farming. I let the muse come whenever it's ready. That tends to happen in between the highs and the lows: in the highs you're too busy having a good time to be interested in taking out a pen; and in the lows you're too f---ing doomed out to take out a pen.

Would it be incorrect to view Strict Joy as a breakup album?

It would incorrect to think of it exclusively as a breakup album, (but) it would be a lie if I said it isn't at all. If you think about an album as a collection of songs which are basically diary entries, then of course our relationship is in there.

When Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, whose second album as the Swell Season, Strict Joy, came out last week, try to explain the events of the last two years, the word "magic" keeps cropping up. "Magic had to be involved," they say or: "There was so much magic around the film, it seemed just possible we'd get an Oscar nomination."

In 2007, Once, a small Irish movie about a Dublin busker and a Czech Big Issue-seller who make music and fall in love, became a big deal. Made for £100,000 with a cast of non-professionals, it went on to gross £13m worldwide and nab an Oscar for best original song, winning praise from Steven Spielberg along the way.

Hansard was lead singer of the Frames, a Dublin folk-rock band; Irglová was a talented pianist Hansard had met during a solo tour in the Czech Republic. They clicked as friends and musical collaborators and Irglová, then only 13, started accompanying Hansard on stage. Three years later, they recorded an album together and the following year, on the set of the movie, something else clicked.

That the delicate love story at the heart of Once had also taken root in real life only added to the film's appeal, particularly in the States. A media whirlwind followed and, as the Oscars race kicked in, the two stars found themselves in other-worldly situations.

"We were invited to Barbra Streisand's house," Hansard recalls. "We sang a couple of songs and it turned out that everyone else at the dinner was an Academy voter. Everyone went home with a copy of our film."

Same story chez Ringo Starr. "Jeff Lynne was there and the Eagles – all these old-school giant rock stars. At one point, me and Ringo were playing spaghetti sticks on a pan. I said, 'Oh my God I'm jamming with a Beatle.' He said, 'Yes you are.' I was blown away."

Hansard, the extrovert of the couple and a born raconteur, was loving every minute of it. Irglová had mixed feelings. "I was put into a situation that I'd never been in before. I didn't really know how to deal with it."

After their Oscars triumph, the doors of Radio City Music Hall and Carnegie Hall swung open. They toured with Bob Dylan and, last March, they spoofed their Once roles on The Simpsons. Their mistake, Hansard admits, was to throw themselves at opportunities without taking a break.

"It had a big impact on me and Mar's situation because we were both fried. She wanted time off. The thing is," he explains, "Mar never asked for any of this. She never asked to be a musician or an actor – I pulled her into all that. Her attitude was: that was fun but I think I'm done now. Whereas I was like, you cannot miss this. I would have killed for these opportunities in the Frames."

You don't have to read between the lines in Strict Joy to guess what happened next. The surprise is not that their affair ended – it's that they continue to be collaborators and friends.

"Music is one thing we're still very good at," says Hansard. "When she's at her instrument and I'm at mine, we get on so well." Irglová maintains that it's much more than a break-up record.

"For me it's not a sad story," she insists. "It's just a continuation of whatever was going on before." The romance may have faded but, as in Once, the music plays quietly on.

Source



Glen Hansard was recently asked what Marketa Irglova — his ex-girlfriend, bandmate in the Swell Season and co-star in the movie Once — brings to his music that his other outfit, the Frames, don’t. Hansard said it was focus. Irglova wouldn’t let a note be played that didn’t make the song better. And she would ask: “If this song only had two words, what are those two words?” If Strict Joy only had two words, they would be “it’s over”. This is Hansard and Irglova’s break-up album. You’ll hear it most clearly on I Have Loved You Wrong, one of the two songs where Irglova sings the lead. She’ll allow only that “you’re every now and then on my mind”. In contrast, Hansard, wary of the indie trap of wallowing in misery, looks hard for a joyous chorus, and finds some lovely ones. The mood is different from their debut, then, but Strict Joy is equally special.

Source.