Photos and Review: The Swell Season

Monday May 12th @ The Brown Theatre

Getting to the Brown was a little bit of a struggle as a Barack Obama rally was being held around the corner at the Convention Center. It was a really strange sight to see the the masses of people waiting in line for the rally. It makes me feel good to see so many people excited about who the next president may be. Sen. Obama's caravan of black SUVs was parked out in front of the Brown Hotel and secret services agents complete with earpieces were standing guard.

After The Swell Season (joined by members of The Frames) took stage, the Obama references continued. It turns out that while out looking for tea earlier in the day they had stumbled upon the rally. Glen Hansard seemed very inspired by what he had seen and joked about not being bale to vote since he is from Ireland.

The show itself was very good and the sound was amazing. I could see set lists posted in front of the artists but it sure didn't seem like they were following any script. The songs were broken up by some of the longest between song banter and stories I have ever heard. Thats not to say I was annoyed at all, most of the stores were very interesting. They also seemed to improvise a lot near the end of the set chatting with each other off mic about what to do next and even playing a few new songs.

My favorite moment of the night was just before Falling slowly when Glen used an analogy to describe how he feels about what the song has done to his life. I will try and paraphrase: "It's like when you have this goal to kick your ball to the end of your garden where you brother is trying to catch it or kick it back. But, when you kick your ball it goes over the goal post, over the back wall, over the river, into the next town and into a place where you never imagined it would be. 4/5ths of you is going "Omigod I cant believe how far my ball went!" those 4/5th completely outweigh the 1/5th of you thats going "I want my fucking ball back".

I just learned that a soundboard recording of this show can be downloaded from a company called Played Last Night . The show costs 9.95 unless you have a special code that was passed out at the show that gets you 4 dollars off. Here is what they have to say about it:

"There is something special about this show, we just can't put our finger on it. The band has a very controlled and calm performance. The crowd is great, but then you hardly expect anything less from Louisville. Recording is excellent, its just a good good show. Some real nice covers as well."