Glen Hansard at Roundhouse

With a career stretching over three decades across music and film, Glen Hansard has built a reputation as one of Ireland’s most compelling musical voices. Last night at the Roundhouse, the singer-songwriter showed us exactly why, as he traded the usual predictability of a big London show for the soulful, tight-knit energy of a hometown gathering.

Across a two-hour and 20-song set, Hansard tore through a fluid mix of folk, rock, and blues without ever missing a beat. Backed by a full band of multi-instrumentalists, he traded stripped-back acoustic simplicity for a richer sound built around brass, keyboards and swelling instrumentation.

Yet despite the expanded sound, it was Hansard’s voice that remained the focal point throughout. Rough-edged and powerful, his vocals moved effortlessly between intimate restraint and a fierce, room-filling intensity.

The order of the set itself felt beautifully paced – tracks flowed naturally into one another, with the urgency of I’ll Be You, I’ll Be Me giving way to the raw grit of The Frames’ Say It to Me Now, making the performance feel less like a sequence of songs and more like a larger story taking shape.

As the night went on, Hansard increasingly stepped into the role of narrator, pausing between tracks to unpack lyrics, explain moments of inspiration and offer long, detailed stories behind the music. Humble, witty and deeply engaging, he turned the spaces between songs into part of the performance itself.

One of the evening’s strongest moments came with Great Weight, a gospel-infused standout from The Swell Season’s recent material. As the band settled into its bluesy rhythmic march, a heavy, collective stillness took over the venue.

If Great Weight provided the emotional centre, then Falling Slowly drew one of the night’s biggest responses before a heartfelt encore saw opener Courtney Marie Andrews return for Let the Good One Go. Closing with When Your Mind’s Made Up, Hansard left to a roaring ovation, guitar raised high overhead. Relying purely on great songwriting and a brilliant band, the performance was a wonderful reminder of what live music should feel like: unpolished, spontaneous, and entirely driven by the delivery.