For the Birds by the Irish band The Frames was a record that felt like it magically descended into my world in 2001, and made a deep and meaningful impact on me and my group of musician friends. I remember driving around listening to a burned CD-R I’d been given in my silver Saturn SL1. It’s hard to disconnect the album from my experience of that time and place, and from my own thoughts about how music was shared then as compared to now. But it’s the music that is more important to talk about. I didn’t know much about the band at first. I think I vaguely knew they made the record at Steve Albini’s studio in Chicago. Initially, the immediacy of the music was almost too much. At the time my approach to music always hovered between two extremes. I grew up loving a lot of heavy guitar-based bands, and then I came of age as an artist playing solo acoustic folk music. I was trying to move away from that at the time. The Frames did what I thought was impossible. They captured the intimacy of what I loved about songwriter music and with the raw power and catharsis of huge feedback-drenched breakdowns. Vocals were sung barely above a whisper, impossibly close-mic’d.  Violin wailed above fuzzed out crescendos. There was a sense of dynamics on the record that feels entirely lost now in music. The songs were full of longing, despair, and romance. They walked a tightrope. I remember the first time seeing The Frames live at The Mercury Lounge in NYC that December.  All my friends were there. The music was so visceral and intense, and beautiful. Glen Hansard’s between-song banter was impossibly charming. I remember feeling like, goddamn, how can anyone be this fucking charming and engaging on stage? I realized the band had an entire catalog of incredible songs beyond For the Birds.  Some of the tunes were bona fide anthems that seemed like they could fill a stadium, not just the 250 capacity room we were in. Maybe in Ireland they did? Of course Glen’s solo career would eventually grow to that kind of scale worldwide. But at that moment, in 2001, it felt like we were in on an incredibly powerful secret.