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His [Glen Hansard’s] second solo album feels like a huge step forward into solitude within an even darker and cooler forest, with “Grace Beneath The Pines” literally placing you inside these troubled woods from the very start. “Her Mercy” is a trademark Hansard slow burn building up to a huge sing-along, but somehow his voice and songwriting feel like they’re coming from a more confident place, as if he’s sharing rather than shouting to get your attention. And “My Little Ruin” is a master class in creating intensity with restraint and space.
It’s a much shorter album, and it’s less rambley. I mean, he’s a natural chatter, like he talks and talks and talks. He’s got the whole nervous Irish talking thing. And he’s, he’s very comfortable with that. But I really felt comfortable. He seems natural, doesn’t he?
I think the person he presents is who he is. It’s very authentic. I saw him play at Radio City Music Hall one year, which was just, it was, it was part of the Once thing, and he came out and just did “Say it to me now” with just the acoustic guitar and no microphone, and that was, you know, it’s powerful. He’s a powerful singer songwriter.
Both of his first two records, he really settles in and just presents a really curated and intentional set of songs. And this is part of the underlying theme of all these albums. There’s a clear artistic intent in every single song, every single note, everything in the collection as a whole. This isn’t just “oh, I wrote 1314, songs, now it’s time to go into the studio.” It really felt like he had something to say. By the time you get to the end of it, you feel like there’s a cohesion to everything. There’s there’s just an intent and that, more than anything, as an artist, is what drives me. I’m maybe of the wrong time or whatever, but I’m an album artist. I want to make albums. I’m not really interested in making singles, when I start thinking about a project, I think about it like an album. How stuff sits together and juxtaposes. To a certain extent, I feel like it never really died. It just kind of moves around, and depending on your favourite artists. Like Iron & Wine, he puts out consistent albums too. He’s kind of dropped off my radar, so I’m not sure what his most recent thing is, but when he gets something I know it’s going to be an album. He’s not a single guy either. It’s a considered album. It’s not his five singles or some other stuff. It’s like when you look at the Beatles catalog, yeah, they mastered the single too. They really did and non album singles too. But that was a different world. That was a different time too. But the thing about the Beatles albums is that you can’t take a single song off of say Revolver and put it on another record. It wouldn’t sit it’s clear that these, all these songs, were made together, and they fit together and it’s just, it’s a snapshot of a time and a place.
You can take the songs and listen to them out of context of the album. Love them as a single piece. You can absolutely still enjoy them that way and that’s true for all of these records I’m talking about, too. Any song, drop the needle, and if you like the artist, you like any of these songs, there’s really not a clunker in the bunch. They’re all really strong songs, but you know, I would even argue that just between these first two Glenn Hansard records, I think they’re very clear collections. The difference between them there’s a much darker and more serious feel to “Didn’t he ramble”. It’s just it’s deeper, it’s darker, it’s a little more haunted, and it’s a little more reticent.
Even just the fact that there are only 10 tracks, and he’s a prolific songwriter, there are only 10 tracks on it, it’s a statement. “That is all we need and I don’t need to say anything else”. That’s totally okay with me, and it should be okay with you. Every time I come back to “Rhythm and repose”, I get to “Song of Good Hope”, which is track 10, and I feel like the record’s over. Then he’s still got three more tracks to go and I still like those tracks, but I swear to God, the record’s over. It’s funny to me how that happens and and some of it might just be an artist thing, and I’m picking up on artist things that other people maybe don’t care about. I tend to be like that when I listen to music. I remember when I was in music school, I had this I had this professor. He was a student professor, but he was really smart guy, and he said to a room of us, I think it was a jazz class. He said, “you realise you’re never going to enjoy listening to music again”.
Taken from an interview with David Cloyd in July 2025 about what albums inspired his latest album, Red Sky Warning, out now on ECR Music Group. – https://ecrmusicgroup.com/artists/david-cloyd/
