LOS ANGELES, CA- Sixteen years may have passed since The Swell Season last released a full-length record, but with “I Leave Everything To You,” Markéta Irglová and Glen Hansard make it feel like time simply stopped, holding space for heartbreak until we were ready to feel it again. Their new album Forward is officially out, but it’s this track—anchored solely by Irglová’s voice and a solitary piano—that has lodged itself somewhere deep within my chest and refuses to let go.
This is a song that doesn’t beg for your attention. It doesn’t perform. It simply breathes.
“I Leave Everything To You” is the kind of track that unfolds in fragile increments. There’s no chorus vying for replay value, no percussive build to manufacture drama. Just Markéta, hushed and trembling, letting the weight of a deep emotional load settle in. “Everything I ever knew, I passed it onto you. The good and the bad,” she sings, her tone barely rising above a whisper, as if confession is an act of courage. It’s devastating. It’s honest. And it’s probably my new favorite Swell Season song.
What sets this performance apart is the way Irglová leans into silence. There’s breath between each line, hesitation in each note, and when she reaches for the high register, it sounds like she can barely support her breath as the weight of emotions pushes down upon her. That vulnerability and sense that she might not make it to the end of the verse is precisely what makes the delivery so affecting. It’s like she’s singing a secret that’s too intimate to reveal.
The song is deeply rooted in reckoning. “I can see where I went wrong / I am trying to be strong / Please, forgive me,” she sings, sounding both like a mother and a daughter, a lover and a friend. And in many ways, that’s what Forward feels like as a whole: a long-awaited letter from a friendship and creative partnership once paused, not broken.
But just when you think the song has bared all it has to offer, a subtle flourish arrives. Faint violins creeps in during the bridge—fleeting and nearly imperceptible at first—gently folding its way into the arrangement. That brief moment of strings never tries to swell or dominate. Instead, it sighs alongside the piano, echoing the quiet yearning of Irglová’s voice. It returns during the outro, as if to cradle the final words with care, adding a graceful ache that lingers long after the final note fades.
The video, filmed in Iceland and directed by Irglová herself, matches the song’s quiet intensity. It’s sparse, allowing you to focus on the gravity of the words and the texture of the space. And while Hansard doesn’t appear in the song or video, his presence is felt—like an old ghost in the room, familiar and still loving.
There’s a line near the end that gutted me: “Uncertainty is my new friend.” It’s a perfect distillation of what it means to live with unresolved endings, to navigate forgiveness and change, and to somehow keep walking forward—eyes soft, heart open, voice shaking.
For fans new and old, this a masterclass in emotional songwriting that doesn’t need to shout to be heard. “I Leave Everything To You” will break your heart. Gently. Beautifully. And somehow, you’ll thank it for doing so.
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