• Glen Hansard @ Grand Opera House, Belfast

    October 25, 2019 - By 

    Those familiar with Glen Hansard’s long-rambling career – three decades and counting – will no doubt be fascinated by the various left turns and changes in musical direction the songwriter has taken during his years of service. The Frames, his alma mater may be on indefinite hiatus, and The Swell Season, his previous artistic partnership with pianist Markéta Irglová, released two albums of hushed folk rock before going their separate ways. Along the road there have been excursions with Eddie Vedder, Robbie Robertson, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen… an illustrious who’s who of musical royalty that epitomises Hansard’s modus operandi of…

  • This Month In Irish Music: January

    January 31, 2019 - By 

    In the first of a new regular series, Colin Gannon rounds up the very best Irish tracks released of the month just gone, featuring SOAK, Arvo Party, ELLL, Problem Patterns, James Joys, Sister Ghost, Gadget & The Cloud , Maria Somerville and more. Problem Patterns — Allegedly In a month where the R&B musician R. Kelly—after painfully long years of swerving accountability for persistent, unsettling claims of heinous abuses—may finally have his day of reckoning in a court, new Belfast-based feminist punk group Problem Patterns’ snarling debut single, ‘Allegedly’, lands a certain potency. The word allegedly—itself a necessary adverb used in copy…

  • Glen Hansard Set For Vicar Street Shows

    November 27, 2018 - By 

    As part of a European tour that takes him via a sold-out show Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie and beyond, Glen Hansard will stop off at Dublin’s Vicar Street for a brace of shows in April. The Dublin songwriter, The Frames’ founder member, actor and activist – who released his third studio album, Between Two Shores, back in January – will play the Thomas House venue on April 9 and 10.  Hansard has previously played the venue in a solo guise fourteen times. Tickets for both shows are priced at €35.00 and go on sale this Friday at 9am.

  • Glen Hansard – Between Two Shores

    January 19, 2018 - By 

      Given that Glen Hansard’s live band tends to contain various members of his old band The Frames, it’d be easy at first glance to wonder what exactly differentiates his solo career from the band he made his name with. On closer inspection though, his solo records so far have marked a gradual divergence from that band’s stock in trade. Though 2012’s Rhythm and Repose wasn’t a huge departure, it gave him the freedom to collaborate with various new musicians in the studio, and 2015’s Didn’t He Ramble saw him both further mine his long standing interest in Irish folk…

  • Glen Hansard Set For Irish Christmas Shows

    August 30, 2017 - By 

    With special guests to be announced, Glen Hansard has announced that he will play three special, full-band Christmas shows in Dublin and Belfast in December. The performances – which promises to “bring the big band back together with strings, horns, bells and whistles – will stop off at Belfast’s Ulster Hall on December 15 and Vicar Street on December 17 and 18. Hansard performed two sold-out intimate shows in the latter Dublin back in August. Tickets for the shows go on sale on Tuesday, September 5 at 9am. Tickets are £27.50 standing/£30.00 seated for the Belfast date and €40 for the…

  • Glen Hansard @ Seamus Heaney HomePlace, Bellaghy

    January 17, 2017 - By 

    “Imagining a hero On some muddy compound, His gift like a slingstone Whirled for the desperate.” Seamus Heaney – Exposure Having spent the last while in the eye of the Apollo House maelstrom and the ensuing bureaucracy that continues to surround it, the unassuming presence of Glen Hansard in Seamus Heaney HomePlace this evening is – before he even plays a note – testament to the character of a man and artist who doesn’t perceive a hierarchy between musician and listener; celebrity and fan; government and citizen. In much the same way one of his most potent influences in Heaney never entertained the…

  • Glen Hansard @ Ulster Hall, Belfast

    December 21, 2015 - By 

    Glen Hansard stands at the edge of the stage, his dark attire all but blending in with the darkness, giving the strange appearance of a floating, disembodied head. He sings ‘Grace Beneath The Pines’, unamplified and accompanied only by a swelling string section, and his voice ghosts all around the interior of the concert hall. It captures the spirit of Josef Locke or John McCormack, namechecked by Hansard later on in the show, and as openings go, it is certainly an effective one. In fact, it sets the tone for the whole evening, which is more subdued than one might…