Album review: Glen Hansard’s electrifyingly morose croon on All That Was East is West of Me Now
Glen Hansard of The Frames.
Glen Hansard, 52, releases his new album the same week rock fans welcome the latest record by The Rolling Stones (not aged 52). One of these projects is a meditation on the ravages of time. Of how, as you proceed into the later chapters of life, your sense of self and of your place in the world goes through a profound metamorphosis. The other features 80-year-old Mick Jagger singing about how fantastic it is to be a rock star.
Then, there was always something of a rumpled codger about Hansard. In the 1990s, he gave Irish rock its own careworn Celtic Radiohead with The Frames. His latest LP is his most plugged-in and wigged-out in more than a decade — hardly a surprise given that it features Frames bandmates Graham Hopkins and Rob Bochnik and is produced by former Frame Dave Odlum.
A midlife (quasi) crisis is never a tidy affair. is suitably sprawling, with the rambling guitars of 'The Feast Of St John' leading into the untethered folk of 'Down On Our Knees' and 'No Mountain'.
The latter is a brittle rumination on how age and wisdom don’t necessarily go hand in hand.
“Lately in this life/ There’s no quick fix or easy answers,” howls Hansard, fighting both demons also the desire to reach for pipe and slippers and numb his woes with a Netflix boxset.
The album title refers to the realisation that strikes many as they proceed into the business end of middle age that their best years are behind them. And not just their best years — ALL their years. Hansard takes up that theme again on the penultimate number, 'Short Life', where the potentially hokey message that our clocks are running down and we should seize the day is elevated by the stark arrangements and Hansard’s electrifyingly morose croon. If you find yourself worn out on the brash new Stones record, Hansard is on hand with the perfect comedown.
