GLEN HANSARD PROVES IT ALL NIGHT AT LONDON’S ROUNDHOUSE

LIVE REVIEW | GLEN HANSARD w/ COURTNEY MARIE ANDREWS | ROUNDHOUSE, LONDON | 23rd May 2026 by Morris Shamah

Glen Hansard concluded his spring UK/EU tour with a Saturday night spectacular at London’s iconic Roundhouse. “Does anyone know where the stage might have been in the 60s?” Glen asked, before playing This Gift. “Back here? So Nick Drake would have been somewhere back here. Fuck. That’s heavy.”

Glen is an artist that trades in heavy. His songs are laden with such emotional weight, it’s like he’s the Atlas of the musical world, carrying the entirety of the complexity of human experience on his back for all of us. He’s been performing professionally for over 35 years, first as frontperson for Dublin 90’s rock group The Frames, then as half of the folk-acoustic duo The Swell Season, and finally, under his own name. Over the decades he’s grown into his place as a sort of aged, grounded vessel for our insecurities, the wise man in a hero’s journey come to life with a battered guitar and a mop of curly once-red hair.

Glen is on tour in support of his recent pair of live albums – Transmissions: East and Transmissions: West, which were recorded live in front of an audience, but in a recording studio. The resulting recordings are rich sonic landscapes brought to their full potential with all the enthusiasm and fervor that a live show requires. Touring in support of this, then, the bar is high – Glen and his band need to find a way to bring that even further, to bring the “studio” record to life. 

And so, at 56, with medical tape on his fingers to match his fully white beard, he performs with the ferocity of a 20 year old. Glen and his band come out swinging, opening with Revelate, a rocker from The Frames and most recent single from Transmissions: West. Lore has it Revelate was an audibled, not-setlisted opener the night before – tonight, lit excruciatingly well and sounding fantastic, the stage and crowd erupt in unison at the start of the song, fueled by the insatiable fire that is Glen Hansard’s infinite soul. “Still got it, Glen!” yells a front row faithful at the end.

Glen performs like a lover, soulful and intensely passionate yet tender and funny and selfless at all times. The set is classic Glen – there’s Fitzcarraldo, complete with a story about the origin of the song, and how he still has the rental tape of the movie the song takes its name from, 30 somewhat years of late fees later. There’s a truly humongous rendition of This Gift, which builds into a full throated crescendo the likes of which an acoustic song has never seen, and after a false ending, a reprise. Didn’t He Ramble is augmented by a new bridge, a spacey cosmic riff that repeats in a circle, and then comes back for the outro. Her Mercy is performed here without any horns – and yet the ghost of the brass can be felt in the bass and guitar and then the violin, the song’s signature refrain teasing your ears like it’s there on the wind. When Glen finally plays the horn line on his guitar, it’s a newfound type of live release. 

They take 90 seconds to cover Discharge’s Drunk With Power, and while an Irish folk & experimental rock band covering an English hardcore punk band sounds like an odd choice,  it works beautifully. The band is pushed forward by Glen’s pure passion, and it fits right in, coming a few songs after The Swell Season’s new protest song Great Weight, which concluded with a chant of Fuck Reform. There’s a metric ton of song dedications throughout the night, as if he just needs to be playing these songs for someone specific in order to unlock the depths of their meaning. Glen even brings out Courtney Marie Andrews, the opening act, to perform one of her own songs in the encore. Courtney Marie Andrews sings Let The Good One Go with Glen and his band, and Glen is relegated to backup vocals, literally out of the spotlight. This is a classic Glen Hansard move – I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of his shows where he doesn’t give away some of his time to someone else. 

Much like Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam, two legends of the arena rock world who trade in the kind of shows that make grown men cry, both of whom Glen has shared the stage with, Glen and his band are a tight unit, in sync at all times, a well oiled machine. And that means when Glen veers left instead of right, they don’t miss a thing. There’s an impromptu solo acapella singing of Rocky Road To Dublin, which the crowd greatly appreciates, of course, and there’s a couple of setlist variations, but you’d never know it wasn’t planned. 

The main set ends with Bird Of Sorrow – a song that Glen has dedicated to his ma many times over the years. This time he tells the story of running back to Ireland from France after she passed, and seeing a seagull way up in the sky while on the ferry. As he turns to his partner to say, that’s her, that’s ma, that’s my Bird of Sorrow – he gets hit in the face with bird shit. Which means, he explains through our laughter, that because the bird was so high up, it must have decided to shit on him before he even saw it. From the laughs comes Glen’s most devastating song, about loving someone who refuses to take care of herself.

The show is absolutely perfect, a marriage of emotion and music, the kind that only comes from true artistry. We laughed, we cried, we stood still in awe and jumped along in communal throes of passion, often all in the same song. All of which begs the question – why is Glen Hansard playing theaters, and not stadiums?

Galleries

Glen Hansard

Courtney Marie Andrews

Glen Hansard Setlist – 23rd May 2026

1. Revelate
2. Don’t Settle
3. I’ll Be You, Be Me
4. Say It to Me Now
5. Gold (Interference cover)
6. My Little Ruin
7. Didn’t He Ramble
8. Rocky Road To Dublin (Glen solo acapella, snippet)
9. Grace Beneath the Pines
10. Her Mercy
11. This Gift
12. Something Right (Interference cover)
13. Great Weight 
14. Fitzcarraldo 
15. Down On Our Knees
16. Drunk With Power (Discharge cover)
17. Falling Slowly
18. Bird of Sorrow

Encore:

19. Let the Good One Go (Courtney Marie Andrews cover) (with Courtney Marie Andrews)
20. Bearing Witness
21. When Your Mind’s Made Up

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Morris Shamah

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