What took summer so long to reach Melbourne this year? Finally, after weeks of feeling like the entire city was lagging behind something important, the weather picked up and was celebrated by an astonishing performance by The Swell Season at the beautiful and historic Palais Theatre in St.Kilda.

Jackson McLaren, a local young Bob Dylan courageously performed to a half empty theatre as the absent punters scrambled for merchandise, ice creams and toilets in the auditorium. Laden with only his harmonica and a guitar, McLaren’s unusual voice and interesting song structures provided an ample foundation for the rest of the night. With an honourable stage presence and an upcoming national tour supporting Josh Pyke and Cloud Control, Jackson McLaren (at only 18 years old) will undoubtedly be surfacing through the Triple J airwaves throughout 2009.

‘This is a song about a man who tells the truth about something that never happened.’ Glen Hansard is the epochal humble front man- wise, funny, poignant, talented and engrossing. His partner in The Swell Season and in real life, Marketa Irglova (whom is eighteen years Hansard’s junior) is a mature, sweet and delightful counterpart. Together with the existing members of Hansard’s foremost music project, The Frames, The Swell Season form a bipolar rush of romantic and powerful songs (and performance).

Hansard has an endearing form of verbal diarrhoea, rambling and going off topic in the most wonderful and imaginative rollercoaster rides. He tells stories of customs, myths and past experiences whilst Irglova is quick to the point but charges straight to the heart with her beautiful Czech-Irish lilt and soprano vocal abilities. The vocal compatibility (much like personality compatibility) of the two front people is an unlikely but refreshing match with Hansard having a large, powerful voice that leaps octaves with ease. The music behind the voices complements with epic bursts of guitar driven rock that takes off into new directions constantly.

Unfortunately for those who had not seen the movie Once (though surely the entire audience had) a few in-jokes about vacuums and his guitar kept surfacing around the songs from the film like Once, Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy and the awe inspiring Falling Slowly. For independent musicians, it was quite a large achievement when Falling Slowly received an Academy Award for best original song in a motion picture. By the end of the set, the audience was completely won over and a standing ovation applauded the band.

Midway during the encore, Irglova rustled around the stage, whispering in band members ear’s and soon announced to the adoring audience that the violinist, Colm MacConIomaire, would be performing one of his solo songs. Irglova urged the audience to close their eyes and imagine they’re in a forest in Ireland and with that, the entire audience grew quiet and still. Coln gave a brief introduction, recorded a few parts into his loop station and dedicated the song to the Koorie people of Australia. A traditional Irish tune with many layers washed over the audience. Taking a peek at their reaction, almost everyone had closed their eyes and were seemingly reluctant to open them at the conclusion of the song; not because they didn’t want to see The Swell Season, but because they wanted to stay in the moment.

After the audience stirred with a rapturous applause, the rest of The Swell Season appeared and launched into Fitzcarraldo, lead single off The Frames’ second album of the same name.

The encore came to an abrupt end and Hansard invited his bandmates out to the front of the stage, past the microphones, past the invisible barrier between spectator and musician and performed a cover of Bob Dylan’s You Ain’t Going Nowhere. Another standing ovation ensued.

When asked after the show about why When Your Mind’s Made Up is written in a 5/4 time signature, Glen Hansard responded with, ‘I don’t know, it just happened- i just wrote it that way’. This is a small insight into how The Swell Season create such successful organic and emotive songs – not through music theory and forced experimentation but through intuition and inspiration.