Good art makes you think. Great art makes you feel. And then there’s the art that drowns out the divide between these two tongues. The Swell Season’s music falls slowly into this third category, stealthily overfilling your proverbial paper cup with a friction of words and song.
The lyrics aren’t as textured as, say, Belle & Sebastian’s. And, as illustrated in the video below of a recent desk performance for NPR, the duo’s sound doesn’t necessitate many instruments; at one point they ask the audience to play the part of a string section. But somehow, the undulating cadence that strings it all together breaks you apart and puts you back together in a constant, involuntary shift — one which submerges you, then immediately pulls you up for air, then submerges you again. The rhythmic push/pull of the momentarily delicate, then swiftly rough, sound of Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglováswells’s voices swells up your consciousness with every gasp you take in between.
Simply put, their music is the sort of creation of something out of nothing that surfaces your inner seasons.
The Swell Season’s next album, Strict Joy, is due out Oct. 27th. Take a listen; if their music doesn’t sway you in this uncomfortable, refreshing way, go seek the art that does. Or, if you can, make it.
Below: The song from the 2007 film “Once,” for which the duo won an Academy Award.
