morgan leigh.

I first heard this song two and a half years ago at a show The Swell Season played at Radio City Music Hall. It was one of the best and - as weird as this may sound - viscerally upsetting shows I’ve ever had the privilege of attending. This was not long after Glen and Marketa Irglova had split up, which was genuinely a huge bummer for me because I had been pretty invested in them as a fan ofOnce, especially since I’d seen them perform the year before and they had been so visibly, stupidly in love with each other at that point that it was kind of incredible. Watching them perform together post-break-up was kind of fraught: there were certain things about the way they were relating to each other and the pain there that were very, very clear to the audience. They were playing this song which they’d barely played anywhere, and not recorded, and - I really can’t describe what it did to the audience; it waselectric. I managed to find a recording online and went back to this random blog page periodically for a very long time to listen to it until I found an mp3 of the file pretty recently. The recorded version on Glen’s new album is lovely but it doesn’t match that original performance, or the live bootleg I’ve got. This is a little closer to the feeling. Any way, though, it’s an incredible song, and I’ll never forget hearing it that first time. I love live music and go to concerts a lot, and that was one of the most affecting moments I’ve experienced in all my years of concert-going. If anybody is thinking about going to see him live, I can’t recommend it highly enough. I’ll be seeing him at the end of the month and I can’t wait.