For me 2019 was not a particularly memorable year for music. I found pleasure in some old favorites but made no significant new discoveries.
Mostly, female artists struck the strongest chords with me. Billie Eilish’s debut ‘When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go’ and Lana Del Ray’s ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell’ were rightly rated highly in many ‘best of’ lists.
I wrote around 10 reviews a month for Whisperin’ & Hollerin’ , about half of my output from the previous year. Continue reading
Tag Archive: Glen Hansard
Just seen and liked John Carney’s movie ‘Once’ whose plaudits include Steven Spielberg and Nanni Moretti despite being shot on a shoestring budget of under £100,000 with a working script that ran to just 60 pages.
If this had been a Hollywood production the guy and the girl would have fallen into each others arms at the end in the middle of a heavy rainstorm or surrounded by a group of applauding strangers. Instead the relationship between the busking Irishman and the Czech woman remains a brief platonic encounter.
He plays songs and fixes vacuum cleaners. She likes his music and has a broken vacuum cleaner. A friendship is formed and they make music together. This deliberately uncomplicated story works because it is told with honesty, warmth and wit.
The fact that Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova won the Oscar for best song (‘Falling Softly’) is the icing on the cake. The award presentation was a genuinely feel good moment, all the more so as Hansard admits he felt like “a plumber at a flower show” in front of all these celebrities.
Watch for yourself and I dare you not to be moved:
