Word Raccoon got too much sun yesterday.
She knows better, but she forgot—so now she’s pink.
Not blush-pink. Not beach-glow pink.
More like regret-meets-crustacean.

But she also submitted poetry, processed another rejection like she was made for it, and even arrived at the gym all in the same day.

(Accepting rejection is part of the writing gig, loveys. All it really means is: “Not the right place, hon. Try down the block at the Jiffy Lube.” I’ve received some truly encouraging rejections lately.)

Today, she’s writing from home.
Not just because the car is gone and we’re not in the mood to wander the neighborhood like a sad poet on foot. But because we stayed up submitting poems, tinkering with lines, and listening to the new Swell Season album, Forward.

Album Details: Forward by The Swell Season

• Artists: The Swell Season (Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová)
• Release Date: June 13 (or July 11 in some territories, including the U.S.), 2025
• Label: Masterkey Sounds & Plateau Records (distributed via Secretly Distribution)
• Producer: Sturla Mio Thorisson
• Recording Location: Masterkey Studios in Iceland
• Musical Contributors:
  • Marja Gaynor – strings
  • Bertrand Galen – strings
  • Joseph Doyle – bass
  • Piero Perelli – drums and percussion

Track List (8 songs – approx. 36–37 minutes total)

1. Factory Street Bells
2. People We Used to Be
3. Stuck in Reverse
4. I Leave Everything To You
5. A Little Sugar
6. Pretty Stories
7. Great Weight
8. Hundred Words

It was a hesitant listen.
Because here’s the truth: Once is sacred.
And not just because it’s exquisite and tender and broke WR and I open in that quiet way only real art does.

So I listened. Reverently. Warily.
And here’s what I’ll say:

The album is welcomely slight, only 37 minutes, as you can see above. I listen to lots of podcasts that are longer than that, but the shortness of the album meant I was able to listen to it multiple times, first with attention, then again while doing chores.

Glen’s voice now has an Eagles-era wear to it, weathered like denim washed too many times. Years of unmitigated screaming will do that. Ask Word Raccoon what howling will do. Now Glen is living in those lower, more comfy sounding notes.

His voice feels conserved now, like he knows the guitar can take the heat, but maybe his vocal cords shouldn’t. That’s wisdom, though I suspect all of us miss some of that touch of fire and broken glass he used to sing with.

Markéta ’s voice?
It’s matured into something smooth, like rich olive oil, straight from a bottle on a balcony in Tuscany. Earthy and assured. Just lovely.

She’s more fully present in this album. I can’t help but love that for her, and for us.

(Please, god, no one forward this to them. This is just for you, dear reader. This would be so much easier if it could just be an email, right? Then I wouldn’t have to have a heart attack when I post about John Green worried he’ll read it. Worried he won’t, too. LOL. But that’s not how communicating via blog works, reader.)

Their first duet “People We Used to Be,” felt a bit too self-aware for Word Raccoon.

It’s not bad. Just performative, like it knew it had to be “a Swell Season song” and pressed too hard on the nostalgia keys, or so Word Raccoon says.

Word Raccoons resists feeling pushed by music. Ask her how much she hates it when she’s watching a movie with incidental music that says “cry now.” She’s like, “I will not and you can’t make me.”

Don’t listen to the lyrics of “People We Used to Be,” though, without a hankie.

The last song’s arrangement dipped too close to Up With People territory for me.
“Hundred Words” would have sounded better if they hadn’t added in those other voices (is it a children’s choir?), because when it was just their duet at the beginning, it was moving.

Those lyrics are future progressively wrecking me. I would say still, but that would mess with the effect of what I was trying to do and look, I did it anyway.

Word Raccoon said to say that.

The whole album feels more produced, IMO. Less live. Less Once, if you know what I mean.
The rawness, the grit, the corner-of-the-room magic?

(Seriously. I don’t like the sound of this particular studio as much. It sounds empty. Music needs warmth to capture and reflect it. I know plenty of people who would argue with that but I said what I said, HERBERT!)

(Messed around and made me yell at Herbert, WR. Eh, that old coot can go…)

 Marketa is surer of herself now. She inhabits her vocals, delivers the lyrics like they’re her life.

But maybe it’s unfair to compare it at all to Once.
It’s not a sequel. It’s not Once 2: Still Once-ing.
It’s something else. A grown-up version of something that once (pardon not one, but now two puns) wrecked us with its simplicity.

Because here’s the truth:
That kind of artistic connection?
It doesn’t dissolve with the relationship.
Their voices still braid.
Their music still flickers with that thing that happens when two people understand something sacred in the same key.

The pair remain linked in that way, no matter the headlines, the time passed, the breakups and reconciliations that don’t belong to us.

We’re all more guarded now, in today’s world. Even them.

This album was worth the listen. The more I listen, the more it gets into my “spirits” as they say in Nashville.

That was kinda of intense. Shall we give ourselves breathing room here, babes? Is it time to talk of shoes?

My headphones.
We should talk about them.

I have every configuration imaginable: two pairs of AirPods, over-ear headphones, a headband with speakers, even off brand new replacements for the earbuds that should be fine. And more.

But the only ones I actually use in bed?
The wired earbuds that came with my iPhone a presidential administration ago.

One earbud doesn’t work. The wire is chewed through in one spot, and honestly, I think Word Raccoon did it.

The one that works controls the volume on my YouTube videos, its most important task. The left one listens when I ask it to, unlike every other piece of tech in this house.

And no, I don’t sleep in AirPods anymore.
Because one night, I woke up… and one was in my mouth.
Yes. That’s a thing that happened.

Despite my family’s reassurances that it’s “basically impossible” to swallow one in your sleep, I can assure you:
It was halfway gone. Word Raccoon dreaming of plums, no doubt. Or maybe she was kissing another raccoon in her sleep.

So now? It’s wired or nothing at night.
Safe. Sensible. Embarrassingly old-school.
(Like my phone. Let’s not talk about how old it is. It still works.)

Maybe it’s time I order more earbuds, the real brand?

Unrelated:

This morning, Raccoon started harping for me to wake up before six.
But I think I’ve calmed her.
We revised poems. We submitted some. We hydrated with frozen blueberries.
We are dressed for yoga. (The gentle rehab-your-body kind, not that other.)
She hasn’t approved the bagel I’d really like her to eat.

She’s still mad about the lack of Coke Zero.
She’s glaring at me like I personally insulted her muse.

But I think she wants to write poetry soon.
So do I.

We’re not sorry we listened to the album.
We’re not sorry we stayed up too late doing the things we love.
And we’re definitely not sorry we still feel something when Glen and Markéta sing together.

Even now.
Even differently.

Forward isn’t Once.
But neither are we.

That doesn’t mean it’s not an album worth hearing.

That was the ending, and I was supposed to stop there, but Word Raccoon is listening to the album still and now “A Little Sugar” is playing and she kinda likes it. It’s definitely backward-looking musically, that one, but it reminds her, too, of this truth: music is to be enjoyed, not endured.

As is life, duckies.

As is life.