August 12, 2009
'TIS THE SEASON:
The Swell Season: Tiny Desk Concert (Stephen Thompson, August 10, 2009, NPR)
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova record and tour together using the name The Swell Season, which is a shorter but far less descriptive moniker than "Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, Who Won Oscars for the Song 'Falling Slowly,' From the Hit Indie Musical Once." So when we informed our coworkers that last Wednesday's Tiny Desk Concert would feature the pair, the response generally ran somewhere along the lines of, "Um, okay. ... Wait, who? THEM? REALLY?"
Two recent films have had the exceptionally rare effect of making you proud to be a human being, Once and Bella. Each, in its own way, expresses a profound belief that we can be decent to one another and are capable of great goodness and of genuinely selfless love.