so i saw the swell season at the greek theater in la on saturday. holy crap.i wasn't sure what exactly to expect. it was, to be only slightly dramatic, life changing. it had been way too long since i had been to a show and this one honestly and truly made me fall in love with music all over again.

i was also really excited to see iron & wine who i've always loved, but unfortunately missed their entire set while driving around with my friend trying to find the venue. really bummed about that. but on the bright side, sam beam did come out later to do a van morrisson cover with the swell season.

the most surreal moment of the night occurred when the man who wrote the songs from The Jungle Book and Mary Poppins performed Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius. yeah you read that right. the entire audience was clapping and singing along like little kids. it was crazy. all Glen Hansard could say when it was over was "...oh my god..." like he was thinking--wtf just happened??? it was hilarious.

i think one of my favorite parts of the night though was when Glen unplugged to play Say It To Me Now. at first i was frustrated because i couldn't hear him very well but a few lines in to the song, his voice carried up to where me and my friend were sitting, and towards the end of the song, i had goosebumps on my arms and chills going down my spine. the guy is so freakin dynamic. i've never seen someone wail on an acoustic guitar the way he did that night, and i've definitely seen alot of wailing. i thought he was going to have to throw away his guitar after a couple songs haha.

what i also really loved about the show was Glen's storytelling and explanations of the songs before he would play. sometimes it's annoying when bands do that, but in this case it actually added something substantial and he made sense too for the most part.

Marketa Irglova is the cutest thing in the world. she seemed a little timid on the first song she performed by herself, but she seemed to loosen up on the others she sang lead vocals for after that. I really enjoyed hearing her sing If You Want Me. the melody is just the sweetest otherworldly melody and Glen's harmony was just perfect.

they played a song called Low Rising that i really liked the concept of. he explained it asbeing about "sitting down your girlfriend and having a serious talk", basically a we love each other and we have to fight for this kind of thing. kinda refreshing actually in the midst of a lot of really sad songs.

what i noticed at the end of the show was that everyone seemed to be smiling, like this weird euphoric spell had been cast over all of us. most shows i've been to, people are concerned about getting out of the place or they just automatically lose the moment. but this was different.