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Old 07-29-2016, 10:37 AM   #31
damien lisa
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short review by Gary Kaill http://www.theskinny.co.uk/music/rev...nnigan-at-swim
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As with her first two records, At Swim favours stealth over force, and its subtleties demand repeated listens. There are no showcase tunes, or at least nothing with a hook large enough to immediately add to the loyal audience she won with 2008's debut Sea Sew. But Hannigan's oeuvre requires patience and focus, and while much of this new collection is dependent on tone and texture to connect, eventually deeper qualties shine through.

The boldy dramatised Prayer for the Dying – a classically styled torch song – and the spares keys and percussion of We the Drowned: these are songs built from, seemingly, little. Typified by the acapella Anahorish, they make much of their unadorned presentation and their understated melodics. Hannigan (here joined by The National's Aaron Dessner, who approached her to offer production support) sings with a joyous and unfettered sense of freedom. The way she delivers the closing Barton – a beautful and mesmerising elegy – is an inch away from miraculous.
review by Jeff Hemmings http://brightonsfinest.com/html/inde...nnigan-at-swim
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Produced by Araon Dressner (The National’s guitarist and established producer), this is Hannigan's third album following 2011’s ‘Passenger’ and the Mercury-nominated Sea Sew in 2008. It’s been five years in the making, and there seems to have been a period when she struggled to write, instead devoting her time to a new boyfriend, voiceover (for the Oscar-nominated animation Song of the Sea) and soundtrack work (for Fargo and Gravity), and dabbling a little in podcasting; she co-hosted the ’Soundings’ podcast, where Lisa would interview guests such as Harry Shearer, Sharon Horgan and David Arnold.

But in terms of her own music she seemed to be temporarily at a loss, and it wasn't until Dressner apparently emailed her out of the blue, that she sparked into writing mode, the result being her most mature and adult work to date. An album that again demonstrates her keen way with a melody, aided by that mesmerising voice that floats along seamlessly, sometimes holding a note for ages, a pure and unalloyed sound. In addition, Dressner and Hannigan put together a band that compliments the sentiments and the mood pretty much perfectly; Dressner's brilliant production always appropriate, simple and avoiding the curse of the overwrought. It's a great example of less is more, all recorded in an intense seven-day burst in a church in Hudson, New York, near where Dressner lives.

Where previously Hannigan would sometimes indulge in a playful musicality and sunny optimism - with what looked like quite a lot of fun doing so - on songs that littered her Sea Sew album, as well as from the ‘Passenger’ album (‘Knots’, ‘What'll I Do’ et al), here she's deadly serious in tackling those age old themes of love, isolation, and homesickness, an undercurrent of sadness prevalent throughout. It's epitomised by the quite simply beautiful ‘Prayer for the Dying’, possibly her finest moment yet. There's lots of reverb here, as Hannigan really gets her angelic voice out, all elongated notes, and subtly tremulous. The sound is akin to an old school doo-wop tune but without the harmonies, just her lamentful voice, inspired in this case by the passing of a friend's parent after an extended illness. Similarly, ‘Funeral Suit’ says it all in the title; pain and sadness expressed through those beautifully crafted and heartfelt notes. As does the simple yet mildly epic piano and guitar-based ‘We, The Drowned’, although there is a celebratory spirit within the darkness: "We know not the fire in which we burn / but we sing and we sing, and the flame goes higher / We read not the pages which we turn / but we sing, and we sing, and we sing," a distant trumpet sounding as trumpets somehow do, life affirming. And lead track ‘Fall’, a song co-written with her former producer Joe Henry, although full of arcane references, is fundamentally about struggle.

It's not all bleak, though. Musically speaking, there's a lightness of touch throughout the album, albeit still wrapped up in a comforting blanket of melancholy. Such as the gentle and hushed ‘Snow’, where Hannigan's voice recalls Rachel Sermanni (as it also does on ‘Fall’), a childlike quality that also serves well on the piano-based and ethereal ‘Ora’. A deeply sad sounding song, it unfortunately suffers from Hannigan's occasionally indecipherable singing style, such is the hushed fragility of some of her singing.

Inevitably, love and desire comes into At Swim, particularly on the warming glow and pulsing groove of ‘Undertow’, which also features some understated banjo on the chorus: "I want to swim in your garden… I want to float on every word you say… I want to be underneath your weather", she enticingly sings. And on the gorgeous ‘Tender’, the band get into minor French cabaret mode, as Hannigan swoops and swoons, mimicking the 'dancing moves' of any relationship.

And then there's ‘Anahorish’, a short, acapella-only version of fellow Irish native Seamus Heaney's poem of the same name, which is about 'a place of clear water', a place where he first went to school and was introduced to the world of education. With multiple harmonies, it's a tender and sympathetic reading of this masterful work.

There's a gently magisterial quality about At Swim that completely avoids bombast and the overplaying of emotions. Hannigan's essential playfulness may have been undermined in recent times, and there's a fragility and a deep melancholy spirit prevalent throughout but almost everything here rises through the bleak and gloomy mists, not as apparitions or shadows of her self, but as a life affirming, if somewhat tender, creature of flesh and blood.
by Michael Bialas Stroke of Luck? How Lisa Hannigan Got Back in the Swim of Things
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For Lisa Hannigan, it was time to either sink or swim.

The lovely Irish singer-songwriter blessed with an exquisite voice and enough vivid images and mesmerizing metaphors to fill the Atlantic Ocean thought she was ready to make her third full-length album. What followed, though, was a constant struggle to stay afloat that led to a plunge into self-doubt.

Then a life preserver emerged to help rescue her from a creative abyss.



The result is At Swim, a shimmering 11-song collection that marks her highly anticipated return as a solo recording artist after a five-year absence. The album will be released worldwide (ATO Records) on Aug. 19.

On the phone from London in late July, the elegant Hannigan displayed a pleasant sense of humor, even while describing the inner battle she experienced while diving back into the business after taking “an embarrassingly long time between albums.”

Splitting time between Dublin and London while developing a personal relationship left Hannigan feeling homesick and unusually uninspired as songwriting became a painstakingly arduous process.

It never happened that way before,” explained Hannigan, whose previous two albums were 2008’s See Sew and 2011’s Passenger. “I’d always kind of gotten into some sort of flow. ... But halfway along, when I was really in the doldrums of a blank page syndrome, I got an email from Aaron Dessner saying, ‘If you’d like to write together or if you need me to produce your record or (provide) some sort of direction, please give me a call.’ So we ended up being musical pen pals from month to month.”

The out-of-the-blue message from the National‘s talented multi-instrumentalist was a godsend for Hannigan, who at the time of this interview still didn’t know what motivated Dessner — whom she called her “lifebuoy” — to get in touch.

Asked if that’s something that frequently happens in her life, Hannigan laughed while drawing out her rambunctious reply.

“No-o-o-o! And certainly not from somebody like Aaron Dessner, whose work I really love and admire. ... He had a very strong idea of how he heard the record sounding. Even before I sent him any songs. So I think he was familiar somewhat with my work before. And he had a very strong kind of aesthetic idea of how he wanted it to be.”

Assuming their common bond — separate musical experiences with the Australian folk duo Luluc — was the reason, Hannigan sounded amazed and amused that the collaboration with Dessner actually happened.

Divine intervention, perhaps?

“I’m not a religious person but I did (laughs) sort of really hope that I was gonna have ... that the window was gonna open in my situation,” she said, still laughing. “I really did because I felt so stuck. And I’d never really felt that before. And I very diligently sat down and tried to write everyday and did write things — terrible, terrible things. ... Every once in a blue moon I would write a song and I would love it. And that actually ended up on the record. But they were very few and far between, those moments, compared to my usual ... not than I’m in any way prolific (laughs) by any standards. But I certainly had more of a rhythm before. So, yeah, I don’t know whether somebody’s been watching over me or it’s just pure ridiculous luck but I’m very grateful for it.”

It’s too easy to chalk it up to the luck of the Irish, though.

While Hannigan may be known for enriching work with compatriots such as Damien Rice and Glen Hansard, she also has performed with all-American working class heroes like Ray LaMontagne and Joe Henry.

Hannigan has enjoyed spending time abroad for work and play (she’ll appear with Dessner at the Eaux Claires festival in Wisconsin this month), and is planning to tour the United States some time after fulfilling a number of European dates to promote At Swim. While London “is an amazing place,” she doesn’t think it suits her quieter personality very well.

In the U.S., though, she does have a soft spot in her heart for New York, Denver (“one of my favorites”) and even Fargo, at least the one captured in the exceptional TV series on FX. About halfway through the seventh episode of Season 2, her haunting voice is featured during a scene that’s particularly painful to watch.

Reaching out unexpectedly, this time by phone, was Noah Hawley, the show’s writer-director. “Would you do me a version of ‘Danny Boy?’ “ he asked her.
Quote:
As an Irish person, it’s a slight hot potato of a song because it’s such a classic,” said Hannigan, who sometimes “warbled alongside John McCormack recordings” but had never performed “Danny Boy” in public. “So I didn’t quite know how to approach it. And then he said, ‘I really want a very disturbing version.’ Which I mean was an absolute treat. ... I’m such a fan of the show anyway and the scene that it’s used in I think is so brilliant. I was just completely over the moon over the whole thing.” (The Fargo Year Two Soundtrack is available on iTunes.)
Her imaginary trip to 1970s American pulp fiction was only temporary, though. Like the leading character in the 2009 novel and subsequent Oscar-nominated film Brooklyn, this real-life daydream believer is happy to “get whiplashed back” to the place she truly loves.

That will always be home,” Hannigan said of Ireland, where her family still lives. “And I will be back there permanently very soon.

Asked what she misses the most about it, even on a day when she jokingly considered London an “upgrade” after arriving from rainy Dublin, Hannigan said, “Well, I think it’s the people, really. And there’s just an ease to life. And it’s from where you’re from that just feels so natural.

Paraphrasing late Irish poet Seamus Heaney, she offered, “It’s like a cure you don’t know is happening. And that’s how I feel about Dublin.


Irish singer-songwriter Lisa Hannigan is back with her first full-length album in five years. (Photo by Rich Gilligan)

Born in Kilcloon in 1981, Hannigan grew up in the countryside near Dublin and quickly took a liking to Irish music, initially drawn to Luke Kelly, the voice of the Dubliners.

I found it, as a child, very arresting to hear somebody sing so boldly, so strongly and plainly,” Hannigan said. “And I was always a big fan of his. And gosh, there’s so many incredible Irish singers.

“As a woman, obviously Sinead O’Connor when I was growing up was incredibly powerful as a performer and as a person. You know, the very strong Irish woman who didn’t apologize, which was very unusual to be allowed to be (during) that time.”

Hannigan spent summers in the West Cork fishing village of Baltimore, where her mother Frances had grown up. While becoming transfixed by singers, Lisa developed a “recurring fascination with the sea” that’s evident in many of her songs, both old (“Sea Song,” “A Sail”) and new (At Swim‘s “Undertow,” “Ora,” “We, The Drowned”).

She admits At Swimis definitely a bit darker in subject matter” than her previous albums, but her bright, cheerful explanations prove that light does shine through the shadows.

“The song titles are quite depressing. It’s not as depressing as the song titles would suggest,”
Hannigan said with a laugh, enjoying a chance to have a little fun at her own expense. “But there are more darker themes in the record, which is not a bad thing, I don’t think.”

On a record with lush instrumentation, Dessner not only produced but also makes significant contributions (piano, bass, Rhodes, guitars, drums, OP-1 synthesizer) along with a few more musicians. Of course, Hannigan’s incredible vocal range is the star of this show.

Yet while downplaying her own instrumental skills, she kids about her plucky banjo turn on “Undertow,” co-written with Iain Archer, by saying, “I tell you, I’m all about banjo solos. Every record I’ve got one in there.

This time, though, on the final song they recorded for the album last year over a short period during the fall, Hannigan couldn’t resist picking up a “little strange banjo” sitting in Dessner’s studio “that was completely out of tune,” she said. “I don’t think anyone’s ever played it on anything. And I had this line in my head and ideas to work it out on the banjo. And it actually just worked so well,” producing an aggressive sound “that only the banjo can bring.

The easiest lyrics came to Hannigan while she was at home folding clothes and listening to a “very visually arresting” piano backing Dessner emailed for “Ora,” one of three songs they co-wrote.

“It sounds to me very obviously like oars in a boat and it felt like the song was traversing in some sort of body of water and you could hear the push and the pull on the oars and the hauling then of the vessel,”
she said.

The music video for “Ora,” the next planned project, sounds as intriguing as the song. Made with her brother Jamie Hannigan and Maeve Clancy, “this wonderful paper artist,” Hannigan described a “very old style of storytelling” called crankies as a scrolling cross between a giant comic strip and shadow puppet theater.



Whatever floats Hannigan’s boat seems filled with promise. While she might be all about aggressive banjo solos and adventurous videos (check out her paint-drenched Knots, left), any kind of seaworthy vessel must be a fixture, too.

Though her Dublin residence isn’t exactly near the sea, “I can sort of see it on a good day,” Hannigan joked. Getting her into the water is another matter.

“I’m a terrible swimmer. But I love boats. ... I mean I can swim but I prefer to be in a boat of some description,”
she added with another laugh.

All joking aside, the award-winning songstress who provided the voice of a mermaid in the Oscar-nominated Irish animated film Song of the Sea is deeply serious about her water fixation.

“I think I sort of associate it with feeling free and feeling washed,”
Hannigan said. “Whenever things are really bad, there’s something about the vastness and the power of the sea I think that puts you back into place. In the best possible sense. It always makes me feel better. And I think a lot of people feel the same way. I tend to go there in the best of times and the worst of times.”

Does it get any better than this? There’s a sumptuous-sounding record on the way, plans to add to her songbook, create more inventive music videos and make visits all over the world to locations ordinary and exotic before the everlasting return to her homeland.

“I am much happier”
now, she exclaims, recalling those dark days in London, where writing songs was like “climbing a giant hill.

After surviving that endurance test, Hannigan finally appears to be in shipshape.
i have no idea how it connect to Brexit Lisa Hannigan swims to safety with the help of musical penpal Aaron Dessner
Quote:
Sandra Sperounes

Published on: August 3, 2016 | Last Updated: August 3, 2016 10:36 AM MDT
Quote:

Lisa Hannigan performs on the main stage at the 2013 Edmonton Folk Music Festival. LARRY WONG / EDMONTON JOURNAL
Irish folk musician Lisa Hannigan was at sea with her songwriting when an unexpected email led to her third and latest collection of tunes, At Swim.

She was working on the followup to her 2011 album, Passenger, but wasn’t happy with most of the results. At the same time, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Aaron Dessner decided to email Hannigan.

“He wrote: ‘If you want to do some writing together or you need someone to produce your record, just let me know’,”
she says. “It was such a lovely email, so generous and open and enthusiastic. It was so brilliant — and slightly ridiculous.”

She had never met him, but she is a fan of his band, The National. The Brooklyn indie-rockers have gone from musician’s musicians to arena and festival headliners over the span of six albums. (We’re still waiting for them to set foot in Alberta. AHEM.)

“He just kept sending me all these beautiful pieces of music and we corresponded over email for ages,”
says Hannigan.

“He’d send me something and then I’d sing or mumble along to it into my phone and send it back to him. We’d do this back and forth until we finally met up in Denmark and Hudson
(in New York). It was fun — my musical pen pal. I’m so indebted to him. If it wasn’t for his email, I’d probably still be trying to write a record, completely losing my mind.”

Instead, she’s on the verge of releasing the finest album of her career — and treating Edmonton to a sneak preview when she and Dessner perform on Friday’s mainstage at the Folk Fest.

At Swim
, due Aug. 19 on ATO Records, is an endless, genre-spanning pool of haunting beauty — with waves of soft acoustic guitar strums, bittersweet melodies, and glints of ghostly banjos, strings and brass, anchored by Hannigan’s delicate voice. Prayer For The Dying is a torch-flavoured piano ballad. Barton verges on electro-pop with a light dusting of drum beats, while Snow twirls and curtsies like a medieval melody, perfect for an episode of Game of Thrones.

Hannigan, who splits her time between Dublin and London, recently fielded questions about her musical pen pal, gloomy songs, and the U.K.’s decision to to leave the European Union in June’s Brexit vote:

Q: What was it like when you and Aaron finally met and started working in the same room together?


A: It was great. It was really nice to meet him. I went to see him in Denmark; he was over with his family. We recorded for a couple of days. It wasn’t even a studio; we were just recording into his computer, really. It was nice to meet face to face. It’s fine over email, but you really need to meet eventually and have a beer and stuff.

Q: Had you two written most of the songs by then?

A: Not at that stage, but by the time we went to Hudson, all the songs — except Undertow — were written. We did a week of recording there, and then Aaron took all the raw materials and did his thing in his garage studio, adding textures and interesting sonic elements, like a trombone choir. He had a very strong idea of what he wanted the record to sound like, which was amazing. As he worked on it, he’d email me a slightly more fleshed-out version of a song — like “Here’s Fall with the violin” — so it was like Christmas. It was great to see them develop over time.

Q: Were there any songs that he really surprised you with?

A: Barton was one. It’s very different to my normal writing. I felt like it was the most unusual for me. I still hadn’t really got my head around it and then he sent it back with a fast and fizzy drum machine (programmed by The National’s Bryan Devendorf) and that one thing really made sense of the whole song. So that was a huge surprise me. It was like: “I get it, I get it!”

Q: What were your first few gigs like with Aaron?

A: We played a small charity gig in Hudson, then we did Boston Calling and the lineup was me, Sufjan Stevens and Sia. It was amazing, for me, but also was a real baptism of fire. So I kind of feel ready for anything. If I can play before Sufjan … that was the most stressful thing. But I’m really looking forward to the Edmonton festival. It’s so much fun! The last time I was there, in 2013, I had absolutely the best time.

Q: What makes it so magical?

A: I don’t know. I think Canadian people are super nice, which helps. Everyone is in good mood. And I think topographically — is that a word? — it’s so beautiful. You’ve got these lovely slopes, everyone can see, everyone’s lying on the grass. I mean, I saw Feist at a 45-degree angle — leaning back, having an amazing time. It’s a very relaxed, audience-friendly festival.

Q: On a completely different subject … where were you during the Brexit vote?

A: I was in Ireland and just agog at the omnishambles. It’s mad. I actually think the worst thing of all is that the whole level of political discourse has just gone through the floor — in terms of name-calling or not needing to have facts. There’s a lot of truthiness going around.

Q: The song titles on your new album sound like they could be applied to Brexit — like Fall, Prayer For The Dying, Funeral Suit or We, the Drowned.

A: You know, I was thinking about We, the Drowned in the middle of the omnishambles and I was thinking: “Gosh, this feels very prescient to this whole situation.” A lot of the songs have gloom and doom titles. Yeah, it’s weird. It’s only when I saw them altogether I went: “Oh dear.”

Q: What inspired We, the Drowned?

A: I was in the middle of writing a song about the subject and I was in a bookshop, flipping through titles, and I saw one called We, the Drowned — or maybe I read it as that — and I just went “Hmm.”

Q: What inspired Prayer For The Dying, if you don’t mind me asking?

A: It is exactly what it is, to be honest. A friend had a terminal illness for a long time and her and her husband were facing it together in the only way that you can — very bravely and very stoically. It was obviously so sad and I just wanted to write a tribute to their very long and happy marriage.

Q: Did she get to hear it?

A: No, she didn’t. But he did and that was nice.

Q: OK, let’s talk about Tender … it feels a little more upbeat.

A: Yeah, although … I’m going to qualify that with something depressing. It was meant as a love song and then my friend, Paul Murray, said: “Oh you know, tender is a loose tooth, askew at the roots.” So there’s some ambiguity to it. I thought: “Oh God.” I hope it’s not too depressing, the whole (album).
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Old 08-04-2016, 01:37 PM   #32
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Lisa Hannigan: ‘I started to really lose sight of what the point of me was’
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An unsolicited email snapped Lisa Hannigan out of a creative doldrum, and now she’s all set to get back on the road and dispel a few myths about her new album ‘At Swim

Catherine Conroy



Lisa Hannigan’s new album is called At Swim and I am interviewing her on a boat on the Liffey. Is that a little too on the nose? We board the St Bridget and, finding the deck too crowded, abandon the sun and bluster of sea chats and go inside for coffee, talking loudly over the din of the engine.

The night before, Hannigan sang onstage with indie rockers The National at Longitude. The Americans, she said, were “so generous and easy with their collaborative spirits”. Indeed, At Swim is the result of a fateful collaboration with The National’s Aaron Dessner. It is a hard-won record, years in the making, with a title that is nothing to do with Flann O’Brien and everything to do with feeling all at sea.

Hannigan had been touring for more than two years with her 2011 album Passenger. The words, she says, just dried up. “I kinda thought, I’ll write some songs while it’s happening, and then I just ended up not writing songs.”

But when the tour was done, it was time to get serious. Hannigan had decided she wanted to use her voice in a different way. “I said to my band, you should go off and do different things, because I’m going to go away and write and I feel like I’m going to swerve somewhere else,”

Hannigan went to Paris for inspiration, then London: “I was kinda all over the shop. I was a bit stuck.” She was on her own and between homes and countries, “I didn’t feel rooted anywhere. I just felt adrift in life.”

She was reading a lot of Seamus Heaney for a part-time degree in English literature. “At one point in the process, I felt I didn’t have a word in my head to write, and thought I’d just read Seamus Heaney because he has all the best words – as Trump might say.”

Songs on a page

One of the songs on At Swim is the hauntingly beautiful Anahorish. It is Hannigan’s melody set to Heaney’s words, which “looked like a song on the page,” she says. “I just started singing it and over the course of a night I remember running out to the bathroom and singing the next line into my phone and then going back and hearing the next line . . . like beads on a string.”

Still, the songs were emerging too slowly. I asked if she was having a full-blown crisis.

“I was definitely veering towards depresh mode at times,”
Hannigan says. “I never really had that moment where I would feel I had some shiny thing at the end of the day. A lot of days I would just feel like I had dust. I started to really lose sight of what the point of me was. I was thinking, maybe I should go back to college and be a vet or something.”

Then, in an almost ridiculous VH1 Behind the Music stroke of good luck, on a dark January day she received an email from Dessner: “Hello. I’m in a band called The National.”

The email was a general desire to connect – to write together, produce, or even just jam. Hannigan is not sure why Dessner contacted her (Why meee? she sings) They had mutual friends in Australian band Luluc. “It was just this gift.”

https://soundcloud.com/irishtimes-li...-album-at-swim

Crafted lyrics


Dessner set the wheels in motion, sending Hannigan vignettes of music, which she “would just sort of hum along, recording myself”. Free from worrying about the music, she “could just react to it melodically” and “stop clinging on so tightly to that idea that lyrics have to be really crafted”.

The two became “musical penpals” and met when they could, in Copenhagen and then in Lismore Castle, when Dessner was working on Cork’s Sounds From a Safe Harbour festival. Joe Henry, Hannigan’s producer friend, helped her with lyrics.

“I had this sort of desert of difficulty,”
she says, “punctuated by a few songs that just sort of came out in five, 10 minutes. I realised the industry involved in writing a lot of **** songs is actually the scaffolding that you’re building to be able to, one morning when you are struck by a feeling, you can just transfer into a song. Like that DH Lawrence line: ‘Not I, Not I, but the wind that blows through me’.”

In New York they put down the basic tracking, which Dessner then took to his garage studio. He’d email her: “‘I’ve put the trombone part on, listen to this.’ So I’d have all these lovely little presents turning up in my inbox.”

Hannigan’s voice sounds different on At Swim, fuller and deeper. From the beginning, she says, Dessner had “this notion that he wanted it to be sort of austere sounding. He focused on making the sounds really richly textured as opposed to melodically dextrous, which I always would’ve tended toward.”

It all seems a conscious move away from her self-professed “plinky-plonky” sound. Song titles include Funeral Suit, We the Drowned and Prayer for the Dying. Lisa, u ok hun? “I don’t think the album is depressing,” she says laughing, but admits that she was “feeling existentially a bit raw at the time.”

I wonder if Hannigan takes comfort in collaborating, it being the place where she started. “Getting back in a room with people” was key for her, and “I think it takes a certain amount letting go of control”.

Each of Hannigan’s three records pointedly correspond to different stages of her life. With Sea Sew (2008), she had something to prove. Hannigan’s voice was a vital element on Damien Rice’s first two albums, O and 9 but after Rice unceremoniously fired Hannigan while on tour in 2007, their professional and romantic relationship ended for good.

Bright and strong


“When I listen to it now, I mean, I love that record, but I can feel my own . . . I really wanted to appear happy because I am happy, but I wanted to project that in a very – I mean, even just from the artwork I wanted a bright and strong feeling.”


Why? “Because I was coming out blinking into the light from a slightly difficult situation and I wanted to feel different and I wanted to feel like me, as opposed to attached to something else.” I compliment Hannigan on her diplomacy. “Oh, ever diplomatic,” she says.

Passenger
(2011) represented a big leap in confidence. And with this one? At 35, “this record just has more of a sense of that maturity,” she says. “And it is a bit darker, but then life is a bit darker than it probably was when I was 27. Just in a realistic way.”

Reading Hannigan’s reviews and interviews, you often sense the journalists falling down a well of manic pixie fawning. Hannigan says she doesn’t read any of it – “even something ambiguous sticks to you like a burr”. Words like “fey” and “winsome” are sometimes used.

“I’m quirky,”
she says, in a faux-quirky voice. “I’m twee. That’s the thing I have to elbow my way out of. I honestly think it’s the first record cover, so it’s my own fault. I feel like that has a certain aesthetic to it, which I didn’t mean in that way. But I think it sort of resonates in that way for people. But I feel very un-twee in myself.”

But people won’t find anything twee on At Swim. “That was just natural, that was just how it sort of came out. Twee is the worst.”

So you’re not at home doing arts and crafts? “No! Not that there’s anything wrong with arts and crafts. I mean, look, we’ve all dabbled.”

Thinking about her contemporaries, she says: “No one would call Conor O’Brien quirky. It’s a particular feminine adjective that people use to put you in your box. I’m getting out of my box.”

Hannigan is still living between London and Dublin, but her heart is here. “Like I don’t use the NHS or anything; I always feel bad about using it. If I was ill I’d think, I better save it up ’til I get home.” She loves how accidentally social Dublin is. “Without any effort on your part you can just sort of brush up against people, find out how they’re doing.” London requires lots of advance planning, which makes her anxious.

Avoiding Dublin


Did she perhaps want to stay away from Dublin until she had some new work ready to go? Was she hiding in London? “Maybe that’s true.” Her partner works in London, but plans to move here.

“The thinking was, I’m going to make my record, and then I’m going to tour and then I’m going to move to Dublin. But actually it is just that I need to get this thing done and then I’m moving into a different time of my life. But, yeah, I did want to bring it home.”

She’s recently finished a tour of Ireland to “flex my muscles or rather find if I had any muscles left”. Europe is next, though not before she heads off to Wisconsin’s Eaux Claires festival, to play with Dessner.

Hannigan is back in her stride. “So much of that time I was like, I’m not making another record, that’s me now.” It was an embarrassment that felt like “internal sunburn. I had that very strong feeling for a couple of years. Now with the record and I’m back touring again, I’m like, yeah this is what I’m for.”
Overcoming writer’s block with an album about homesickness
Quote:
August 3, 2016


Writer’s block can be a frustrating and upsetting time for artists; as you struggle to think of the best way to convey your ideas, or are devoid of them entirely, writes Adam Shaw.

Irish musician Lisa Hannigan would often scribble out whatever popped into her head before settling on the ‘right’ words or she would go on long walks to try and clear her head. But for some time before the completion of her latest album, At Swim, she was at a loss for what to put down, so much so that she threw herself into any form of distraction she could find.

An acting debut as a mermaid in the Oscar-nominated animation Song of the Sea, soundtrack work on Fargo and Gravity and the hosting of her podcast, Soundings, kept her occupied but there was still no new record.

Until producer and guitarist Aaron Dessner stepped in.

“I got this email out of the blue from him, where he suggested that we work together on some new music,”
Lisa said. “It was really weird because I’d never written songs over email before and Aaron and I sort of became musical pen pals.”

What they’ve created is an album which is “in part about homesickness and isolation but also about love”.

The sounds are also influenced by Lisa’s distribution of her time between Dublin and London.

“I think this is something a lot of Irish people in the UK can sympathise with,”
she explained. “I’ve spent most of my life in Dublin and Baltimore in West Cork, and I grew up in Meath – these places will always be where I consider my home to be.

“But I’ve also spent time in places like London and Glasgow, while my music has taken me to Europe and other parts of the world.”



The variety of destinations Lisa has been fortunate enough to visit is mirrored by her musical tastes.

“I’ve always listened to a lot of music, and have a very wide musical base. From a very early age I was listening to all sorts,”
she said.

And though she acknowledged that music in general is a huge part of Irish culture, and that Irish sounds will always form part of her musical psyche, performing in Irish bars has never been her cup of tea.

“It’s not that I wouldn’t do it, it’s just not really my style. And I was always a bit too shy to go into the bars and perform in Dublin!”


Shy or not, Lisa always wanted to be a singer and she has forged a very successful career, including a number one album in Ireland with Passenger in 2011.

“I’ve always sung wherever I’ve been, sometimes to the annoyance of my family and flatmates,”
she said. “To be honest my first ambition was to be an opera singer but I eventually came round to the notion that I have a tiny voice.

“I then discovered microphones and, after doing backing vocals for Damien Rice, I got the chance to sing for a living.”


As she gears up for a big UK tour, followed by a stint in Europe, Lisa has some advice for aspiring artists, particularly those who might be struggling for inspiration.

“I often find myself humming along like a madman and that can be the basis for one of my songs,”
she explained. “And the best piece of advice I can give is to write and play as much as possible. You’ll soon realise that you have to write a lot of bad songs until you get the right one.”
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Old 08-04-2016, 07:17 PM   #33
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^ Thanks!
That Irish Times interview is really good, and I'd probably have missed it otherwise.
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Old 08-06-2016, 04:51 AM   #34
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recording bathroom and bedroom and everything... https://soundcloud.com/irishtimes-li...an-music-month

words http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-s...p1Q3qQ.twitter

it's nice to hear her talk abt haskins
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Old 08-15-2016, 12:48 AM   #35
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Life lessons with Lisa Hannigan: 'I had a crisis of confidence when it came to making this album. It's not fun having a blank page at the end of the day'
Quote:
John Meagher

PUBLISHED
14/08/2016 | 02:30


Lisa Hannigan had a crisis of confidence while working on 'At Swim', which is released on Friday

Lisa Hannigan (35), grew up in Co Meath and came to prominence as backing singer to then-boyfriend Damien Rice. She sung on his first two albums and spent seven years touring in his band. When their personal and professional union ended, Hannigan went out on her own, releasing a pair of acclaimed albums, Sea Sew and Passenger. Her latest album, At Swim, was recorded in upstate New York and was produced by Aaron Dessner, guitarist with The National. She divides her time between Dublin and London.


I don't remember a time when I wasn't singing and it was just always a part of my day. My mum would always sing in the house while she was doing things: more than music, there was always singing going on.

I got a notion as a young teenager that I wanted to be an opera singer. I was obsessed with Maria Callas. I got lessons for years but then I realised I just don't have those pipes and there's nothing you can do about it.

A hugely important moment for me was going to see Kristin Hersh at the Button Factory [in Dublin]. She writes very confessional music that's searingly honest and brutal and I loved her record Hips and Makers and I learnt to play songs off it. It changed the way I thought about singing. Then I started writing terrible songs that thankfully have been lost to the mists of time. I was quite shy and I wouldn't have been so bold to say that I would be a songwriter, but I know I wanted to sing in my life.

I learnt classical guitar and then sort of forgot it again. And even to this day, I can only really pick the guitar - I'm very bad at strumming, because I never really learnt it, although I tend to pick things up. I write on guitar or mandolin, but in a very skeletal way.

When I met Damien Rice, I was very lucky. It was the outlet I needed for my music and seven years working with him helped me come around to the idea that I could write my own songs. It was a case of building confidence. The song-writing came eventually.

It was frightening from a personal prospective to go out on the road after Damien. But I was lucky that people were very receptive to the idea of me being on my own. They were warm to me. Even physically, learning to sing for an hour-and-a-half was very different - it had its own kinetic energy. The really difficult bit didn't last that long - I feel like I had a very soft landing.

I wouldn't work with Damien again. I don't think that would be very good for either of us. He's doing his own thing and that's brilliant and I'm certainly doing my own thing and that's brilliant. We did some great work together that I will always remember fondly. And every so often a song will come on and I'll think, "Oh!" - but all that is very much in the past.

[Damien and I] don't really keep in contact. He emailed a couple of times when he was trying to finish his record but I've only seen him once in the past 10 years.

I think you have to write so many s*** songs before you have a really good one. That's certainly something I've learned on this record. If you want everything you do to be good, you're never going to write anything - it's like you've to wade through all this rubbish to get to the good stuff. But everybody goes through that.

I had a crisis of confidence when it came to making this album. It's not fun having a blank page at the end of the day. It's easy to get down on yourself when you don't have the fruits of your labours at a tangible form at the end of the day. A month or two of that would really get me down.

The album title [At Swim] is about the feeling I had, that I was sort of adrift. I had moved out of the house I lived in for 10 years here in Dublin - my flatmate was getting married - and, then, when I came back from tour, I didn't know where to go. I went to Paris and here and down the country and then London - I didn't feel at home anywhere and that fed into that slightly uneasy feeling which in turn fed into the songs.

I feel that by getting older, your perspective changes slightly and sometimes difficult situations can end up with you approaching life in a more positive way. And that's there in some of the songs, even something like We the Drowned which is about that self-sabotaging nature that's in all of us.

I think some questions [that journalists ask] are of a personal nature and I don't want to go there. Once you open that door you can't close it again and I really want to keep that door closed.

It's ridiculous that we haven't been given a vote to repeal the 8th [amendment on abortion]. I'm a woman of child-bearing age and I feel very angry that I can't exercise my democratic right. Amnesty International did a poll recently and the vast majority of Irish people want to see change so it's infuriating that just because politicians say they don't believe in it [abortion rights], they won't call a referendum. It's not a subject that's easy to write a song about, though!

Streaming is here to stay and that can be a little tough to accept for those who feel that music should be in physical form. There's no point in pretending that the horse hasn't left the stable, and I think [streaming] is a great way for people to hear music and discover new artists, but it's important that a way is found to pay musicians more fairly for their content, for want of a better word.
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Old 08-15-2016, 09:21 AM   #36
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thanks for sharing. the new insight about the process of writing and recording is refreshing
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Old 08-15-2016, 01:03 PM   #37
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thank you for posting these!
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Old 08-19-2016, 12:23 AM   #38
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http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs...ntent=20160818
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