take this sinking boat and point it home...

I'm an Irish girl at heart. I love Yeats and Joyce - men who lived inside their heads and fought against the world. The Irish arts are characteristically desperate, brooding, subtle, and undeniably beautiful. Dubliners gets me every time. And it follows that one of my favorite bands in the entire history of music is The Frames. You might recognize frontman Glen Hansard from the amazing movie The Commitments or the new musical masterpiece that is Once. If you have money to spare, and this sort of music is your thing, you have to pick up Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova's The Swell Season - I couldn't create a better project in my imagination. The Frames are generous men - they share the howling pain and light-headed lovesickness that most people keep to themselves. They also share their music, courtesy their website and their label, Anti-Records.

The Frames - Sad Songs
The Frames - Falling Slowly
The Frames - Fitzcarraldo (Live)
The Frames - Dream Awake
The Frames - Star Star (Live)
The Frames - Lay Me Down

And here's Glen performing with Marketa outside Sundance...in the snow.