1. Falling Slowly 2. If You Want Me 3. Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy 4. When Your Mind s Made Up 5. Lies 6. Gold 7. The Hill 8. Fallen From The Sky 9. Leave 10. Trying To Pull Myself Away 11. All The Way Down 12. Once 13. Say It To Me Now Even those allergic to musicals may be won over by Once, a tender-hearted Irish romance with songs by Czech Republic-born Markéta Irglová and Frames frontman Glen Hansard (the film s director, John Carney, actually used to play bass in the group). The trick here is that Irglová and Hansard also play the leads, because their characters are shown busking, writing music, or rehearsing, the songs are smoothly integrated in the film. The overall acoustic mood won t surprise fans of the Frames--some tracks (Say It to Me, When Your Mind s Made Up) have even popped up on the band s albums, though the arrangements are more pared-down here, befitting the scruffy, street-musician setting. Being the lesser-known entity, Irglová feels like a revelation, she sounds a bit like a folkie Björk on If You Want Me, and her song The Hill is downright heartbreaking. Irglová and Hansard had already made the 2006 album The Swell Season together, so their collaboration here feels really organic--they so... | 
(2008-01-06) Overall a great collection of songs : I would agree it does resonate more emotionally if you have seen the film first , as the music is integral to it. However I did buy this before I had had a chance to see the film (it didn t get that wide a release unfortunately) and the songs still stand up very well by themselves. Glen Hansard was previously in The Commitments and latterly the band The Frames so the musical pedigree is very good. A couple of the tracks have previously seen the light of day on the most recent Frames album The Cost (2006) (Falling S...
