After 12 months on the high seas, Lisa Hannigan is coming home. Ahead of her gig in Glór next week, Andrew Hamilton caught up with the Mercury Prize nominee and got a sneak preview of the new songs just on the horizon.
One album, two American tours, three times round the UK and right around Ireland more times than she can count - the last year has been an amazing voyage for Lisa Hannigan. With her debut record Sea Sew captured the hearts of fans and critics alike, the Meath singer songwriter has finally found her own place in the son - far from the reach of Damien Rice’s ever shrinking shadow.
But now, after living and breathing the album for more than a year, the temptation to move on to newer pastures grows ever stronger.
“It’s exciting. I have a few songs done and we are playing them all live at the moment. I definitely wanted to play them live for awhile before we record it. As soon as I write a new song I want to play it live straight away. So we have been doing a bit of that and I think in January I’ll just hunker down and do some serious writing for the next album. I’ve got a good few done but I have a long way to go yet…
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The last time I review an Enya album - almost a year ago to the day as it happens - I received a three page letter of complaint all the way from France from a wounded fan with a bone to pick.
This wasn’t your usual letter of complaint mind. I wasn’t called anything nasty, there were no four letter words used (in English or in French) and my manhood was not once called into question.
Instead, my French friend Etienne laid out a number of reasoned and perfectly sane reasons why I might reconsider my opinion.
And while my opinion hasn’t changed, I still that Enya is really really good elevator music, with little or no substance - I am now at least open to the possibility that I just don’t get it.
So the very least I can say about Enya’s Best Of, due for release later this month, is that it is relaxing. More than that songs like Orinoco Flow, Storms in Africa and Caribbean Blue will pull at the nostalgia part of your brain and remind you of the 1980’s - when we were all poor but strangely happy.
Andrew Hamilton
This month has already seen the release of a near avalanche of Irish Best Of records - each promising to be a stepping stone for the musician involved and not a swan song. In the case of Mick Hanly I’d tend to believe it.
After 35 years of writing, recording and touring the likelihood is that the former Moving Heart’s front-man will be dragged from the stage only to the grave, and not a minute before.
Mick Hanly Collected is a selection of some of Hanly’s best songs from the three decades. Some standout tracks include a live version of Damaged Halo, an epic six minute version of I Feel I Should Be Calling You and another live recording, this time a great version of the anthemic Past The Point of Rescue.
Indeed the live recordings on this album all work a treat. Complete with the odd crowd sing-along, these songs are a pint of stout away from actually being there.
Hanly alongside Arty McGlynn will be in the Market House in Miltown Malbay to launch this album on Friday, November 20. Andrew Hamilton
What started as a way to make friends with his younger brother has now morfed into a new and exciting musical adventure. Andrew Hamilton chats to Eoin Ó Súilleabháin, son of Mícheál, brother of Moley and one half of Size2Shoes.
It’s funny. They say that no news is good news, but in the newspaper business, good news really isn’t news at all. The same, some might say, could be said for the world of art and music.
From Cobain to Cohen, Morrissey to Joy Division the overwhelming majority of musicians have a huge leaning to the darker side of the tracks. The reasons are this are many - some write to confess, others to protest but the single greatest reason - according to page 23 of the rock and roll bible, is that is it simply much more difficult to write great happy songs.
Limerick band, Size2Shoes, are looking to re-write this particular piece of music lore. Sons of music legend Mícheál Súilleabháin - Eoin and Moley - have began a campaign of putting a smile back on music’s face.
“I guess it was always the voices that we were interested in. The music that we would have listened to growing up was always driven by the music and something that we could sing along to. Like the two of us are huge fans of Michael Jackson and we just saw the This Is It movie last night. Things like that have always blown us away and it’s always what we wanted to go. It’s something that we really think attracts people and turns people on…
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There is something so immediately likable about Mugger Dave. I’ve been struggling to put my finger on exactly what that is since the Galway alt rockers first pick up a guitar in anger more than two years ago and now I think I have finally cracked it.
I’m not sure if they’d enjoy the comparison or not but they remind me so much of an early Supergrass, right around the release of I Should Coco. It’s about the energy, the tunefulness and the atmosphere - but mostly it’s about writing songs at about 2,000 miles an hour.
Crawl Up is the third EP from the three piece and I’m sure I’m not the only out there who is about ready for an album thank you very much. The EP’s title track is radio gold - and about as close to an Irish pop-rock anthem as I have heard this year.
The EP is completed by The Stranger - another catchy track with the fast becoming signature vocal harmonies and a little whistling thrown in for good measure. Andrew Hamilton
Don’t be put off by the fact that this album probably wont get a spin on mainstream radio - at least not before midnight - this is a really tasty record.
Having set a high bar for themselves with their 2008 Par Avion EP, this album delivers on that early promise and them some. Par Avion was packed with methodically crafted electro pop - this is all but with an added edge that is both neck grabbing and a little scary.
The album opens with Buddy, a song as tuneful as is it dark, featuring samples of all those annoying noises that a computer makes whenever it decides that it wont do what you are asking it to. Beautifully eerie, it opens the album like a swift kick to the belly (in a good way).
Combine this with Rusty’s Last Stand - a song equally as eerie and maybe a little more aggressive - and the scene has been set for a seriously interesting record.
The album mellows a bit as it goes, with fan favorites such as Plain, Fluid Floe and Caffeine Dreams but by and large it keeps the level of intensity right up there for a full 40 minutes. Andrew Hamilton
2009 was the year that almost broke Delorentos. Andrew Hamilton chats to front-man Kieran McGuinness about the break-up, reformation and the winter of discontent that almost tore the band apart.
Blanchardstown is depressing at the best of time. But on hopelessly dark January evenings - when the rain and traffic transforms the Navan Road into a World War One trench - all within the shadow of the Connolly Hospital is transformed into something reminiscent of one of Dante’s circles.
It was on one such evening that it all came home Kieran McGuinness.
THAT record contract, the big one which had promised world wide distribution, had just vanished, almost overnight, into this air. The band, sick with exhaustion from almost two years of non-stop touring and recording, was on the brink of collapse. And then, as if by some sort of sick slapstick joke, the company which distributes their records just happens to go bust.
For Delorentos, a band who operates their own record label with no label assistance, this meant a trip to the Blanchardstown Shopping Centre, to personally pack the car with thousands of own CD, their lives work, and bring it home to gather dust in an attack.
Is it any wonder that two week later singer and guitarist Ronan (Ro) Yourell, decided that enough was enough.
“It was a strange couple of months - a strange whole year really. We had had a great run with the first album. We played all over Ireland, we sold out venues that we never even dreamed or playing, and all the accolades that it got were humbling and brilliant. So we decided to go away and start writing the second album. And as we did that we started to get a lot of interest from record labels…
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One of the album that seems to have slip through the cracks of the Autumn rush to release, Tickety Boo is the second album from Dublin singer songwriter Colm Lynch.
Three years after the release of debut record, A Whisper in a Riot, Tickety Boo is an album the deserves not to be ignored.
It’s a big album in every way. It’s got that rocky big-band sound going on, Lynch’s voice is undoubtedly as big as it is guttural and gravely and on this record he is definitely trying to write big songs.
Drawing easy stylistic comparisons with anyone from Springstein and Dylan to Steve Earl and the kings of Bluesgrass - the album is a throat grabber in need of a throat to grab.
It’s all there - the passion, the sound and the performance, but the songs themselves lack something of a edge that would have transformed this from a very good album into a possibly great album.
That said it’s a very decent listen - with the promise of even more to come. Andrew Hamilton
I don’t know what you’re into - but I’d guess it’s probably not this. You may remember Alexander Rybak from such musical moments as this years Eurovision Song Contest - a contest which he won for Norway with a record 387 points.
Fairtales is the 23-year-olds debut album which will get it’s Irish release later this week. So, after disregard the Eurovision winning title track out of fairness (he was young, he needed the money), the remainder of the album opens before you like a weird night at the circus or the soundtrack to some unmade Disney b-movie about the group of pigeon- English speaking eastern Europe gypsies with nothing to talk about.
Ya, so maybe that’s a bit harsh, but you didn’t have to listen to it. My favourite cringy moment was Dolphin, a confessional tale about Alexander’s sea mammal friend who floats above the world.
But you know, I do believe that Alexander actually does converse with a magic space dolphin - in fact, I have a feeling that the dolphin does most of his song-writing. Andrew Hamilton
We love their soaps and their wine - but we just can’t take their music. With the few notable exception (Nick Cave, AC/DC, INXS), the musician of Australia have consistently struggled to make an impact on the world stage.
Their international breakthroughs can be counted on one hand, which the musicians of much smaller populations such as Scotland dwarfing them in terms of international success.
Sadly for them, soft rockers The Basic are unlikely to buck this trend. The Melbourne four piece are touring Europe on the back of their second album Keep Your Friends Close.
The album is built on that middle-of-the-road Ozzie sound perfected by the likes of Crowded House more than a decade ago. The critical difference however is that Neil Finn can write brilliant heart-felt songs, which at the moment seems to be a bit beyond The Basics Wally de Backer and Kris Schroeder.
Instead, their songs are laced with funny(ish), quirky(ish) lyrics that don’t really add up to more than a chuckle. Andrew Hamilton
Car Insurance Ireland:
Dunno what a "player hater" is but, my God, that sausage-covered baby-man was kinda disturbing! :) Still, my opinion is only slightly wavering. They d
andy:
Okay... Mr Car Insurance Man, I think you might be what the young people these days are calling a "player hater" - (am I saying that right?)... check
Car Insurance Ireland:
Haha. Yes, very much for real! :) Ok, they might have something but, in comparison to Supergrass, that "something" doesn't amount to anything! :)
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