[RonjaGirl]

Here another review of the gig...

Lisa Hannigan at St John’s, Smith Square, SW1

Unceremoniously dismissed in 2006 by Damien Rice, with whom she sang for seven years, Lisa Hannigan has not let the grass grow under her feet. The singer from Co Meath has written and recorded her debut album, Sea Sew, and made an extensive tour of America with her own band as the guest of Jason Mraz.

The album, which has already gone platinum in Ireland, is scheduled for release in Britain early next year, and in the hushed grandeur of this church venue Hannigan unveiled both band and songs for the first time in this country with a sweet but rather nervous flourish.

With her hair tied in bunches, and wearing a blue sparkling dress, Hannigan, 27, was a slightly confused vision of bohemian glamour. There was something of the sugar plum sprite in her delivery of songs such as Splishy Splashy, during which a glockenspiel twinkled like a musical box, and I Don’t Know, which featured a gently tootling trumpet and violin. Her voice was light, the arrangements intricate and delicate, and for a while it all seemed as substantial as a will o’ the wisp.

A terrible clanger by the pianist Gavin Glass, who played the opening notes of Pistachio in the wrong key, seemed to relieve the tension. Hannigan went over, gave him a hug, and they started the song again. The band embarked on a haunting version of Dylan’s Tom Thumb’s Blues, which Hannigan dedicated to her dad, and then tackled the Rodgers and Hart evergreen The Lady is a Tramp, refashioned somewhat in the spirit of Tom Waits.

Over the course of a show that applied a left-field pop aesthetic to the gentlest of folk roots, Hannigan also played acoustic guitar, melodica and a hand-pumped harmonium, and occasionally bashed a tambourine stick against her tummy.

The encores brought a mesmerising version of the Iron & Wine song Free Until They Cut Me Down, its blues-riff coda prompting the most forceful performance of a show that was, at times, too precious for its own good.

3/5

David Sinclair