Album review: Glen Hansard’s electrifyingly morose croon on All That Was East is West of Me Now

A meditation on the ravages of time from the Irish musician

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.