Glen Hansard Announces New Album 'This Wild Willing,' Out April 12
Those who have followed Glen Hansard’s career since his Academy Award winning turn in the film Once will have witnessed one artistic arc: the journey of a Dublin busker who cut his teeth on the greats - Dylan, Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen – and followed the path of the troubadour to great effect.
But there is another thread running through Hansard’s musicianship; in his decades as lead singer of Irish stalwarts The Frames, rock and folk ambitions coexisted with moments of strangeness, intimacy, and stillness.
Today Hansard announces This Wild Willing, his fourth full-length album and a collection of songs that follows this second path, where he marries the sonic inventiveness of the best of his work in The Frames with the discipline he has found as a songwriter in his solo career.
Lead track “I’ll Be You, Be Me” finds Hansard weighing the risks of such vulnerability, his restrained vocal masking the fury of the underlying instrumental’s building storm, and to which Hansard advises “on first listen, please turn it up loud in your head phones!” Listen to it HERE.
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“I’ll be you, be me and I’ll be you/I’ll take your truth, your lies, your secrets,” he sings, negotiating the consuming potential of desire. There is danger here, but it is without rancor or ill-will – the danger of a hare with its belly exposed. There is also a duality in the invitation: the audience is drawn in just as surely as the song’s object to the immersive world conjured by the album.
This Wild Willing was conceived in Paris and recorded at Black Box studios with producer David Odlum and a core group of musicians that includes classically-trained Iranian musicians the Khoshravesh brothers, long-time Hansard associates Joe Doyle (bass) and ROMY (piano, vocals, string arrangements), and Dublin electronic musicians Deasy and Dunk Murphy (Sunken Foal). The album is grounded in a spirit of openness to invention and experimentation.
TOUR DATES
3/7 – Amsterdam, Netherlands – Koninklijk Theater Carré
3/8 – Hamburg, Germany – Elbphilharmonie Hamburg
3/21 – New York, NY – Michael Dorf Presents The Music of Van Morrison
3/29 – Pelham, TN – PBS Bluegrass Underground Live Tapings at the Caverns
4/9 – Dublin, Ireland – Vicar Street
4/10 – Dublin, Ireland – Vicar Street
4/12 – Derry, United Kingdom – St. Columb’s Hall
4/13 – Derry, United Kingdom – St. Columb’s Hall
4/15 – London, United Kingdom – Barbican Centre
4/16 – London, United Kingdom – Barbican Centre
4/27 – Paris, France – Casino de Paris
4/29 – Amsterdam, Netherlands – Koninklijk Theater Carré
4/30 – Amsterdam, Netherlands – Koninklijk Theater Carré
5/2 – Kobenhavn, Denmark – Amager Bio / BETA
5/4 – Stockholm, Sweden – Skandiascenen
5/6 – Brussels, Belgium – Cirque Royal
5/8 – Cologne, Germany – Kőlner Philharmonie
5/9 – Frankfurt Am Main, Germany – Alte Oper
5/11 – Brno-žabovřesky, Czech Republic – 5th Anniversary of SONO Centrum
5/13 – Warszawa, Poland – Palladium
5/14 – Warszawa, Poland – Palladium
5/16 – Berlin, Germany – Admiralspalast
5/17 – Berlin, Germany – Admiralspalast
5/19 – Berlin, Germany – Admiralspalast
This Wild Willing Track Listing
1. I’ll Be You, Be Me
2. Don’t Settle
3. Fools Game
4. Race To The Bottom
5. The Closing Door
6. Brother’s Keeper
7. Mary
8. Threading Water
9. Weight of the World
10. Who’s Gonna Be Your Baby Now
11. Good Life Of Song
12. Leave A Light
Pre-Order ‘This Wild Wiling’