Glen Hansard ★★★★
All That Is East Is West Of Me Now
ANTI-. CD/DL/LP
Fifth – and best – solo album from Frames frontman.
CROWD-TESTED over many nights playing in a Dublin backroom bar for sometimes indifferent audiences who barely recognised him, Glen Hansard took his time whittling and shaping this first solo album in four years. Although only nine tracks, it’s a sprawling affair revisiting just about ever y road he’s previously travelled, but somehow tying them all together for the first time. There’s the cranked urgency of six-and-a-half minute Down On Our Knees, the most ‘rock’ thing Hansard’s recorded, the Leonard Cohenesque contemplation of Sure As The Rain, swelling piano ballad Ghost and the super positivity of There’s No Mountain’s lyrics: “There ain’t no mountain you can’t move or you can’t climb”, questioning throughout how our past both sabotages and assists our future. A chart-topping household name in Ireland, it’s amazing that someone as thoughtful and nuanced as Hansard is still so underrated in the UK.