Marketa Irglova

November 9, 2011, 3:28 pm

Marketa Irglova, the Czech sweetheart and a longtime collaborator with Irish singer-songwriter Glen Hansard, goes solo. Sort of.


MARKETA IRGLOVA - ANAR

Marketa, it seems, has always taken risks and chances. The latest?  A move to New York City and now the new solo album ANAR which shows it isn't  really a lonely project. Mar has surrounded herself with some amazing friends. A Portland show later this month at The Doug Fir.  More on that HERE.

From PASTE comes this fine overview:

Most of this rather intimate album is just Irglová, a piano and her ethereal, light-in-the-darkness harmonies, along with occasional horns and strings to keep things fresh. Her lyrics are simple and contemplative, but never feel simplistic, and like her work with The Swell Season, it all feels almost painfully sincere. It’s the kind of music one can curl up and hide in, to paraphrase Maya Angelou. When she sings “We can run free and have adventures of our own / take the time if you need to be alone” on “Divine Timing,” a couplet which would feel hackneyed in, say, a pop-punk or adult contemporary context, the lines sound warm and welcome here amid the divine-choir oohs and aahs, and they make you hope she’s right. The hushed opener “Your Company” works in a similar fashion, a candlelit kind of love and longing anthem full of swaying piano and beautiful warbling from Irglová.

Those looking for an abundant, anthemic “Falling Slowly”-style love theme may be let down by the lack of one here, although first single “Go Back” carries the same weight and resonance. With a quietly intense, gradually building longing in her voice that channels the soul masters of heartbreak like Otis Redding, Irglová seamlessly blends all manners of theme and era and genre—the horns and call-and-response harmonies carry more of a hint of The Shirelles than they do The Swell Season; the brass-and-keys interplay that swirls around the refrain recalls Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois. Somewhere between Prague and Dublin and Detroit, this sound manifests, and it works. Read more HERE.




And this is great. I rediscovered this interview that goes back in time, when we were still in our old digs, in the KINK Green Room.