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Here's the unedited version of the Glen Hansard interview.

I don't think it's my best work, but there you go. Win some, lose some...

The last time that Irish band The Frames played a gig in Belfast was around twelve months ago, just shortly after the release of the album Burn the Maps, arguably their most challenging yet most rewarding work to date. These gigs always prove to be celebratory, hugely emotive affairs, so fans will be overjoyed to know that The Frames will play in our city again this December. That is, if they can make it unscathed through yet another exhausting, whistle-stop tour of Europe.

AU chats to Frames frontman Glen Hansard about the forthcoming gig across a wire from Belfast to Prague. Glen is, as ever, friendly, polite and enthusiastic. It is difficult not to be charmed by his charisma and lust for life. After spending half an hour in his company, AU is enjoying the warmth of a heady, ready-brek glow. Glen is everything that the stereotypical rock star is not. Arrogance and aloofness do not appear to be in his vocabulary, or his genetic makeup. He listens patiently to each inane question as if it is the first time that he has been asked it, even though AU knows that he has heard everything that we have written down one hundred times before. He does not knock other artists. Rather, he raves about them: Leonard Cohen and Van Morrison will be familiar names to anyone who has ever heard Glen play a solo set, but what is more surprising is that he also effuses about – and yes, you are reading this correctly – David Gray.

“David Gray has made some fantastic records,” Glen says, without a hint of sarcasm.

The Frames have been playing together in one form or another for around fifteen years. That’s a pretty impressive statistic. Most pop careers have risen, fallen and hit the thorny comeback trail in a fraction of that time. In fact, fifteen years is equal to the amount of time that many of today’s deluge of identikit pop singers have been alive. Fifteen years is roughly twice the time that The Pixies faced one another in the same studio or on the same stage, and that’s counting their recent reunion tour. In this light, one wonders what has kept The Frames going for this length of time, and what keeps them going still. When AU asks Glen Hansard what the band has been doing during the twelve months since they last visited Belfast, some clues begin to appear.

“Pretty much exactly what we were up to then: touring and more touring. We have already been to America three times this year, and that was fantastic, but playing at The Point in Dublin last week was amazing. For some, The Point has this great prestige attached to it. When people heard about that gig, they phoned us up and said, “Wow, you guys are playing the Point, you must really have made it”. I kind of thought that myself. I mean, we’re a band that plays venues like Whelan’s or Vicar Street. We don’t play The Point.”

Even though The Frames had been playing dozens of sell-out shows across the length and breadth of Ireland for years, none of this prepared the band for the enormity of the experience.

“At first I was amazed at how small the venue felt, but then I was so overwhelmed by it all that I couldn’t sing. I lost my breath at the end of ‘Revelate’. That’s never happened to me before, and the first time it does it’s in front of thousands of people.”

Glen laughs as he remembers the scene: “After we finished playing, I just collapsed. The guy from the St. John’s Ambulance saw me lying on the floor, and came over and gave me oxygen. I had seen those guys backstage at festivals when the likes of Green Day were playing, but I never thought that I would need them.”

One of the reasons that the group was catapulted into playing such a big league venue was the critical success of Burn the Maps. It’s funny to think that the record received so many glowing reviews, because at first this deliberate left turn confused many fans. By no means could it be said that The Frames had done a Kid A, even though the coda of the track ‘Ship Caught in the Bay’ comprises an onslaught of Aphex Twin clicks, beeps and loops, but Burn the Maps definitely marked a brave foray into darker, stranger territory. If previous record For the Birds was an early morning soundtrack awash with lilting, vaguely Celtic melodies, then Burn the Maps sounded like its more sinister twin: the perfect accompaniment to a nocturnal jaunt through a spooky wood full of knotholes and gingerbread houses.

After getting over the initial shock that the band had largely dispensed with the somnolent beauty that imbued For the Birds, the rhythms and judders in Burn the Maps begin to itch and prick the skin. On opening track ‘Happy’, the layered harmonies sound as if they are thrumming within a shell cupped to the listener’s ear. Once again, the lyrics are built on recurring theme of self-doubt: “Come and help me out I’m sick from the fire / From inserting a laugh where there’s none”. Does Glen find it easy to write about his own failings?

“It’s coming more with age,” Glen says. “I feel more comfortable writing about myself, but I’m also getting bored with expecting people to listen to me complaining about my problems. I hate all that moany-boy navel-gazing. I hear myself and think, “You really need to lighten up, man”. I mean, I can’t listen to reggae music, but I like the philosophy behind it: just sit back and enjoy life.”

Lyrically, ‘Happy’, and the rest of Burn the Maps, seems to be about what happens when you can’t just sit back and enjoy life, what one does when putting on a brave face, keeping your pecker up, holding your head high and other clichés don’t work. As in live favourite ‘Rent Day Blues’ from the album Dance the Devil, many of the tracks seem to be about quitting or leaving a place or a relationship. In ‘Sideways Down’, there is the line “Maybe I should just move along”. In ‘Locusts’, Glen sings, “I’m moving off / I’m packing up”. Look inside the album sleeve and you will see a photograph of Glen gripping on to a rope that disappears off the edge of the paper. If this is supposed to be a metaphor, then it is intriguingly unclear what it might mean: is this a picture of a man at the end of his emotional tether, or is it one of a man defiantly ringing a victory bell?

“It’s more accurate to sing about your inner self. It’s the blues, man. Ironically, even though you are singing about your stuff, it has an uplifting effect. I mean, I can listen to a Leonard Cohen album and it makes me feel happy.”

Fans will know that Frames concerts are peppered with verbal interludes of Glen spinning tales about the inspiration behind his songs. This works both as entertainment and as an insight into the songwriting craft. If pressed further on the subject, however, Glen is entertainingly elusive.

“I wouldn’t be able to tell you what informs my lyrics even though I write them,” he laughs. “I was watching a Bruce Springsteen DVD recently, and he was asked a question about the meaning behind one of his songs. He said, “Now, was I thinking that when I wrote it? Not at all. Was I feeling it? Every bit of it”.”

It is this intensity of feeling that has endeared The Frames to a large and devoted fanbase, both here and overseas. They frequently play in places as far-flung as Prague and Czechoslovakia. Their popularity was significantly boosted by the release of the single ‘Fake’, the first track to be lifted from Burn the Maps. Oddly, the radio friendly quality of the song (read: it has a wonderful, instantly memorable melody) and its chart success put some folks off.

“That was the mad irony. ‘Fake’ wasn’t popular with some Frames fans. It was one of those weird times. In Europe they heard it on the radio and really got it, but in Ireland it was different. We lost some people to it, but there was a whole new audience that came to us too, which was mad.” Glen laughs again as he remembers the scene: “There were kids in the front row of our gigs wearing Kylie Minogue t-shirts.”

Once again, Glen refuses to be disparaging about any other artist, or any of the band’s listeners.

“The whole idea of popularity is based on the idea that there will always be someone who is more underground than you. It’s about wanting to be part of a club that you will never be part of.”

Even the fact that ‘Fake’ magnetised many younger listeners to the band does not seem to faze him.

“Listen, you should never dismiss your audience, no matter how young they are. I cared more about music when I was sixteen than I ever will again. When you are young, you are untouched by things, you are full of wonder. As you grow up a thicker skin grows around your heart and your soul, and you stop feeling things.”

It is this openness and abundance of affection for his audience that continues to attract new listeners to The Frames. One fan recently wrote on a music website that the appeal behind the band’s majestic yet intimate live performances was that, in spite of the adulation he receives, Glen remains human and down-to-earth.

“That’s good to know,” Glen says, sounding genuinely flattered. “What other option is there? What else can one do? If you are not singing about human, then you are lying.”

It is this ability to stop the heart and soul from hardening that infuses Frames concerts with such hypnotic power. What amazes AU is how many great songs they have in their onstage repertoire - like a magician continually pulling and unending string of brightly-coloured ribbons out of a top hat. What can fans expect from the upcoming show in Belfast?

“A lot of Burn the Maps, as well as some new songs. On tour we’ve been playing four or five new songs a night. We are never ready to record a song until it has been road-tested live a few times. Quite often, I write a song and then when we perform it live it becomes a completely different beast.”

One of these songs is ‘People Get Ready’, originally mooted as a track on Burn the Maps, which, like other Frames songs, starts off quiet and gradually builds to a passionate crescendo.

“Yeah,” Glen says, laughing again, “We call that “The Wedge”.”

At this point, it has become clear just what has fuelled The Frames for the past fifteen years: a simple, honest-to-goodness love for the music. The thing that caused Glen to lose his breath while playing is the same thing that causes an audience to lose theirs when they hear the band: a passion for writing and performing heartfelt songs. Like Bruce Springsteen, The Frames feel every bit of it each time they play a gig, regardless of whether it is at the moon-crater-sized Point in Dublin or in a small coffee shop in Prague. In the early song ‘Fitzcarraldo’, Glen sings, “I have chose the long road / That leads me out to God knows”, before adding, “So I can’t stop right now”. Hopefully, The Frames will not be stopping any time soon.