I know you’ve seen the movie Once and I’m sure you loved it as much as I did. I convinced many a friend of the need to watch it. One said friend then convinced me to go see The Swell Season with her to listen to the songs live. I have to admit, I kind of just went because she wanted to, and the excitement about the film (and my addiction to the soundtrack) had definitely dwindled between the point months ago when I bought the ticket and last Saturday when we went to see the show.

That said, their performance is one of the best concerts I’ve been to in a long time. It was at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House here in Denver, a gorgeous gorgeous theater with such perfect sound that when Glen Hansard first took the stage he stepped in front of the mic and monitors, said, “Can you hear me up there? I hear they do opera here and figured, what the hell” and then proceeded to perform the first song solo acoustic right there, sans mic. It was perfection.

I could go through song by song about how the show was really good. But I just want to instead say that I think an ideal show for me, no matter what kind of music, is one where you feel like the artist has successfully created a specific mood and atmosphere. You feel like they’re really tuned in to something. This show had such an intimacy to it that, even though I was in a balcony probably 100 feet away from the stage, I felt I was the only one there sitting in a living room listening to friends play songs.

Instead of further describing this, go here and listen to the entire concert from when they were in DC at the 9:30 and tell me you don’t just become totally enraptured listening to Glen’s story about how “Drown Out” got made or by the clarity of Marketa’s voice or that you don’t get all goosebumpy listening to “Star Star” and their cover of “Into the Mystic” or just get ecstatically happy listening to their second encore covering “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.”