Forward＜限定盤/Ivory Vinyl＞

When the Swell Season -- the duo of Irish singer/songwriter/guitarist Glen Hansard and Czech singer/songwriter/pianist Marketa Irglova -- emerged in 2006 and 2007, they were tangled up with the ill-fated romance of the characters they played in Once, an indie film about a pair of working-class musicians who forge a short-lived creative connection. Somewhere in the process of finishing and releasing the movie, then winning the Oscar for Best Song for "Falling Slowly," the real-life Hansard and Irglova had a brief romance of their own. Their subsequent breakup fueled much the Swell Seasons second album, the Billboard 200 Top 20-charting Strict Joy, released in 2009. Hansard, who up to that point was known as frontman of the Frames, went on to a successful solo career, and Irglova moved to Iceland, where she started a family with music producer Sturla Mio Thorisson while occasionally releasing her own solo material. After getting together for a pair of concerts in South Korea in 2015, the duo didnt reunite again until 2022, when they embarked on a short U.S. tour. The reconnection ultimately resulted in a third Swell Season album that was recorded at Irglova and Thorissons home studio, Masterkey Studios, outside Reykjavik and released on Masterkey Sounds. Alongside more-existential subject matter and other personal experiences, the duos long relationship arc may have informed at least some of the material on the resulting Forward, an album guided by the theme of persevering. Its split between passionate, horns-injected folk-rockers led by Hansard ("Factory Street Bells," the bluesy "Great Weight"), tear-stained ballads fronted by Irglova ("I Leave Everything to You"), and stirring duets, all culminating in the rousing closer, "Hundred Words," which includes the co-delivered sentiment "Dont give up/Dont stop believing." Along the way, other album highlights include the Hansard outing "Stuck in Reverse" ("Can we go backwards?/Back to the days before the wheels came off?") and "Pretty Stories," an atmospheric, Irglova-led piano pop song about the lies we tell ourselves to be "free of worries," albeit temporarily. Taken together -- and like their previous work, it does all come together beautifully -- Forward is another accomplished, heartrending set by the pair. ~ Marcy Donelson