Everything's just swell

COVER STORY:IT'S TIME for Glen Hansard to go to work once again. He's had a few weeks off to tend to the garden and do some carpentry, but he must now put aside such concerns, he tells JIM CARROLL

There’s a new album ready to roll and another touring and promotional cycle – which must have become second nature to Hansard by now – is about to kick in. This won’t be the only time in the coming months that food goes cold at the table as Hansard talks away until the tape runs out.

Strict Joy, the second album from Hansard's "other" band, The Swell Season, is markedly different from anything else the likable Dubliner has been involved with. While Hansard has had to deal with high expectations with The Frames, he has never had to follow up a worldwide hit before.

That hit is Falling Slowly. The song won an Oscar for Hansard and Markéta Irglová, who, as The Swell Season, contributed the soundtrack to John Carney's movie Once– as well as being its stars. The huge success of both movie and song ensured 2007 and 2008 were rollercoaster years for the pair.

“In the eye of the madness, I was torn between two things”, Hansard recalls. “On one hand, I couldn’t believe my luck and I was just rolling with it. Inside, though, I was a little embarrassed by it all. I was wondering did it compromise me, I was even partially rejecting it. When you’ve been in a band for 17 years and all you’ve known is struggle, you tend to struggle with success too when it comes along.”

Moreover, there was no time to take it all in. “I always thought that if you win an award, you open a bottle of champagne, go on holiday and reflect on what just happened. But that doesn’t happen in real life. Sure, we opened a bottle of champagne, but we just started working harder and harder. We got pulled into this mad cycle of work, so we didn’t get any time to absorb it.

“The first time I’ve had off since then was the last month or so. I did nothing for that month. I didn’t tour. I wrote a few songs, sure, but I just worked in the garden. During that month, it suddenly hit me what an amazing experience it had been. Everything I had ever wanted, everything I had ever aimed my soul at, had happened. And it happened, thank God, before I got cynical.”

Few would begrudge Hansard his success. A career that began as a teenage busker on Dublin’s Grafton Street has seen many ups and downs. He formed The Frames in the late 1980s and has released six studio albums with them on various labels. Huge in Ireland, The Frames also built large live audiences in Europe, the US and Australia.

But when success of a kind came for The Frames, Hansard wanted to run away from it. "When we released Fake, we got tons of radioplay and found ourselves playing to people in Kylie Minogue T-shirts while our faithful audience were five rows back with their arms folded.

“It was one of those tunes I wrote in three minutes and wasn’t really into, but everyone I played it to went wild. I don’t play it any more. That’s typical me. I write a song, it gets loads of attention, I get embarrassed by it and never play it again. What an idiot I am sometimes. I mean, we played Marlay Park and I look back on it with both pride and embarrassment.

"But the success that Oncebrought happened at just the right time for me. I was ready for it and it felt natural. I was not overwhelmed by it and could drop all my guards, no matter where I was or who I was dealing with. I could even have conversations with Dublin taxi drivers where I didn't mind that they were as usual sussing me out."

Interestingly, Oncedid not do as well in Ireland as it did elsewhere, though this didn't surprise Hansard. "It got the reaction we expected here," he smiles. "We expected 'ah, there's your man Outspan from The Frames doing a film with his mates' and we got exactly that. In Ireland, you'll always be 'your man who was in The Commitments'. These days, that doesn't bother me because I have another few notches on my belt."

His opinion of Ireland has also mellowed. At the end of 2007 in an interview with Róisín Ingle for this newspaper, Hansard hit out at how Ireland had changed during the boom.

“Everything I said in that interview, all that anti-Irish stuff about how we were pigs at the trough and ripping people off, was because I couldn’t stand what Ireland was turning into. When I look back at that interview, I’ll stand by what I said, but my views have changed because things have changed.

“This recession is very karmic and out of this darkness that the country is going through will come a great humility again.

“I’m so proud of being Irish. I feel such a connection to this place that I want to go and learn Irish because I feel I should speak the language if I’m to be really Irish.

“I grew up wearing black armbands when the hunger strikers died. I went on those marches. I grew up basically a Provo, though I never obviously got into any activities. I was writing ‘IRA, Brits out’ on walls all over where I grew up, but that was a false sense of Irishness. That was me wanting to fit in with my big brother and all his mates. When I developed my own brain, I began to see that as bullshit, even though parts of it still resonate deeply within me because it’s part of where I’m from.”

The title of the new album comes from James Stephens, a writer who set Hansard thinking anew about Ireland and Irish culture. "I read this James Stephens book called The Crock Of Goldand it blew my mind. He was one of the guys, but he didn't make the posters of great writers you'll see in Irish pubs. He put me in a place I hadn't been in before and pulled my thinking about Ireland in a different direction.

“Now, I come back to Ireland and I see people smiling. I’m no longer hung up about what people are thinking about me or my music. I realise my Irishness sets me apart. The Ireland that I live in now is a place that’s full of magic and when I say ‘magic’, I don’t mean mysticism.”

During the campaign for Once, Hansard and Irglová went from being a couple on the big screen to being a couple in real life. Though that relationship is now over, the new album is still a Swell Season record.

“When it came to making the record, I initially wanted to make a record with people I didn’t know,” says Hansard. “I thought it would be more creative, more interesting to be in a room with people you didn’t necessarily know. In a studio, you’re hoping for a spark and discomfort and if you have a band who’re always playing together, everyone knows how each person will react.

"Anyway, Mar and myself and The Frames went into a studio with Peter Karis in Bridgeport, Connecticut for a few days. I loved what he did with The National on Boxerand everything was easy. We worked really fast and we challenged ourselves. Colm [Mac Con Iomaire, violin player] wasn't involved as much because he had his own record on the go at the time, which meant Rob [Bochnik, guitarist] could step up more. It felt so natural. There was a niggle in the back of my mind about whether this was a Frames album or a Swell Season record, but I deferred to the songs."

Hansard sees The Swell Season as a finite project because his relationship with Irglová has changed. “I think myself that the Swell Season will come to an end by nature of the fact that me and Mar will see less and less of each other as our lives go on.

“What happened to us is we were pals first and foremost. Nothing makes you become pals quicker than travelling together on the road. Then we became lovers and that period of our life was amazing, but we graduated to being pals again. We broke up because neither of us were really enjoying it. When we broke up, we became even better friends and the only thing we lost was that we weren’t spending intimate hours together making music.”

He doesn’t find it strange or difficult to be still in a band with his ex-lover.

"I remember helping Mar with the lyrics to Fantasy Manand being really, really hard on that character because I think, for all intents and purposes, that that character is me. Not that I've asked her, though," he laughs.

Hansard intends to go back to making records and touring with The Frames, but knows it will be difficult. "A lot of Frames listeners, supporters and patrons – I hate to call them fans – have moved on. When The Frames do play again, it will be to a new audience. Some have stuck with The Swell Season but I also totally understand why the others haven't. When your band is struggling, you'll struggle along with them, willing them on. But when Fakehappened, they withdrew and new people came in. With The Swell Season, that also happened, but the numbers we were gaining were much more."

A new audience will have a new relationship with the performer, which Hansard seems to relish. “I really enjoyed The Swell Season tour around Ireland. It’s a different relationship with our audience. With The Frames, people felt an ownership and felt they could shout things out at you in the room that you wouldn’t and shouldn’t tolerate. The Frames and certainly me suffered from this. We wanted to be our audience, which we couldn’t be. We were showing our hand too much.”

It sounds as if Hansard needs to be a little more ruthless when it comes to the divide between audience and act. "Well, I suppose I am ruthless in that I was willing to leave The Frames behind to do this. We got a lot of stick for The Swell Season from our audience. Some people just wanted us to keep doing Revelateevery night. I'm 39 now and I don't want to fucking do Revelateevery night! I want to sing about where I am.

“I’m not 20 any more and some record label has dropped us and I’m going ‘fuck you’ to the world. Those days of proving myself are not gone, but the days of the desperate young lad from Ballymun who just wants to be recognised are over. That character has calmed down and grown up.

“The last few years has given me the confidence I never had. Finally, I can look at myself in the mirror and go ‘you can do this’. I’m not the best, there is no such thing, but I can do this.”

• Strict Joyis released on October 23rd

Glen and co at The Music Show

Glen Hansard gives a public interview at 5pm in the RDS, Dublin 4tomorrow as part of The Music Show.The show is on tomorrow and Sunday and includes gigs, workshops and debates.

SATURDAY GIGS

1pmBipolar Empire

2pmThe Coronas

3pmThe Chapters

4pmImelda May

5pmDirector

SUNDAY GIGS

12.30pmThe Brilliant Things

1pmVengeance and the Panther Queen

1.30pmDelorentos

2.30pmVillagers

3.30pmDavid Kitt

4.30pmRep of Loose 5.30pm Blizzards

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

2pm,Saturday Debate (Bill Whelan, BP Fallon etc): Is Illegal Filesharing Killing Music?

1pm,Sunday Drum Clinic

4pm,Sunday Public Interview with Christy Moore

More info: www.themusicshow.ie