‘Once’ live!
Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova
Old Town School Of Folk Music, Chicago
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Sundance Film Festival smash Once won’t have the kind of money big-studio films get when the annual Oscar push commences. Yet while the movie seemed somewhat secondary as its songs were performed Saturday, promotional tours like this one won’t hurt its chances February 24th.
The mini-musical’s leads, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, have performed before as The Swell Season, and some of the songs from the soundtrack actually debuted with Hansard’s full-time band, The Frames. Yet their impact on filmgoers was such that the ticketless want-ins outside the Old Town School were offering inflated sums for a seat –an unusual sight on North Lincoln Avenue.
Despite the intimate venue, the tension between the stars was diminished, largely due to Irglova’s piano forming an ocean-sized obstacle in the middle of the stage. Hansard, whose Frames have a well-established rapport with Chicagoans, was more than prepared to play storyteller, however, a one-man peanut gallery armed with jibes for his main gig (“wussy folk rock”) and an endless stream of Irish barstool wisdom.
The choice of “When You’re Mind’s Made Up” as an opener was ironic, given it’s the first song performed with a full band in the movie. But with the clandestine aid of bassist Rob Sullivan, irony was quickly displaced with near-uncomfortable sincerity. Hansard’s guitar amplifier and microphone were both on, but his howling overmatched them both, uncannily replicating the movie version’s raw intensity. After an equally wrenching version of “Lies,” Hansard called Irglova over to share his chair for a hushed “All The Way Down” and she would oust him temporarily for her shimmering “If You Want Me.”
To keep the movie at bay, the songs were played out of order — they’re part of the dialogue on film — and the duo occasionally gave it amiss altogether. Hansard introduced a new song (“Fancy Man”), wandered through a traditional tune turned onto him by Will Oldham (“Ohio River Boat Song”), a fully electric jaunt through the Pixies’ “Cactus,” and the evening’s only clear misstep, a giddily cheesy romp through “Into The Mystic.”
When it would come time to re-engage Once, Hansard and Irglova smoothly got back into character. Resisting a cringeworthy cutesiness for movie centerpiece “Falling Slowly” — “There’s a kiss at the end of a rainbow,” anyone? — the duo simply drove it home as they did the others on the setlist. Hansard, who would eventually hijack the show with a self-penned children’s song and a reenactment of the movie’s bus scene, nevertheless burned holes through searing renditions of “Leave” and “Say It To Me Now.”
— Steve Forstneger
Category: Live Reviews, Weekly
