Lisa Hannigan might well be a synonym for adorable. I don’t mean that pejoratively, or in an irritating cutesy way. She’s just very sweet, funny and endearingly unaffected. Despite a high profile long term collaboration with Damian Rice (you might recognise her distinctive voice from single “9 Crimes”), and a Mercury nod for her debut solo release Sea Sew, Hannigan is devoid of artistic airs, as happy chatting about my part time job in a harpsichord shop as she is discussing her latest album.
Hannigan grew up dabbling in classical singing but it was a fortuitous encounter with Rice in her first week at Trinty College, Dublin that changed her life. Two years later she had dropped the degree and was travelling the world, countering Rice’s famously overblown passion with her own subtle vocals. The collaboration lasted six years before Rice abruptly dropped her one night before a show. For all the experience must have been a shock at the time, the enforced move solo appears to have been the making of Hannigan. Her first album Sea Sew, recorded in two weeks, generated far more buzz than a lo-fi folk release can rightfully expect, attracting plaudits for it’s home made, ramshackle air. Hannigan creates the kind of hushed folk music that is best heard in intimate surrounds, sat on the floor of a tiny festival marque or, even better, in a cosy pub. In fact, it was a youtube video of Hannigan performing in a pub that caught the eye of influential US chat show host Stephen Colbert back in 2009, leading to a TV appearance that helped to bring her romantic rusticity to a wider audience.
Cooped up in a cluttered office in the back of The Duchess, Hannigan explains that her second album Passenger, which has a more sprawling, restless air than its cosy predecessor, was a response to the experience of touring. “It was written on the road so it kind of has an overarching theme” she says, “because it was all written in the same sort of head.. you’re sort of writing it all physically in the same sort of space. It’s kind of nice for a record, without being a concept record, to have a theme. It’s the stuff that you have in your pockets when you’re on the road, that’s what I was kind of thinking, when you’re away from home.”
Passenger was recorded in Wales, in even less time than Sea Sew but it feels more polished and self-assured than it’s predecessor, incorporating hints of Americana and bluegrass into Hannigan’s more typical pastoral sound. I wonder if she struggled to follow up such an acclaimed predecessor, but Hannigan appears to have avoided the ‘second album curse’ altogether. “For the first record it was all really new and every stage of the thing, which now comes more naturally, was a bit like ‘uh!'” she explains. “So this time all of that was taken away. I just had to focus on making kind of the record that I wanted to make, instead of trying to figure out how to do it at all. So I think I actually found the second record much easier, more relaxed and natural, you know it just kind of came together so nicely. Whereas the first record you were just kind of gripping on for dear life to get it finished!”
Hannigan grew up close to the Irish countryside and this experience seems to have sculpted her frame of reference. Many of her songs draw on the natural world for often striking imagery, from “Little Bird”, which echoes Leonard Cohen by asking “aren’t you every bird on every wire?”, to the many references on Sea Sew, an album that juxtaposes the security of home with the uncertainty of the sea. “I suppose where you grow up is where your references come from, Hannigan agrees, “it’s so deep rooted. I tend just to get a melody, sort of have some sort of idea and just go on a big walk, just be humming away to myself, singing into my phone, that sort of thing. You know “O Sleep” [a collaboration with Ray LaMontagne on Passenger]? I wanted to write a song and I went for this big walk round sandy mount in Dublin, for like four hours, and I stopped half way in a cafe and wrote all the words I had on the back of a sandwich bag. I had the melody in my phone, then I came home afterwards and sort of worked out the chords. So that was a funny day! You have to get rid of that part of your brain which is saying ‘write, write, write’ and looking at your blank sheet. You have to wait until that bit is taken over by something else and then the rest of your brain can just wander. You don’t steer this too much because then you’re going to be mired in clichés even more. You want there to be a spark of strangeness on it.”
This spontaneity perhaps goes some way to explain Hannigan’s rough and ready charm. What makes her work stand out from the folky milieu is the combination of her remarkable voice, that travels with ease from lilting half whisper to husky howl in a heartbeat, and her distinct instrumentation, all weaving strings and wheezy harmoniums. The harmonium has become something of a trademark for Hannigan, who first stumbled across it during a performance by Beck at an awards ceremony with Rice. “It’s got this kind of beautiful, mournful nostalgia to it which the songs sort of have inherently,” she explains, “it was just so easy to write on it because you could sort of change one finger and the chord was different. As a simple tool for writing it really was great. But I just love the sound of it and that was kind of the anchor. And then it was just really gathering things I liked and hoping they’d sound well together, which I guess is the only way to do it.”
Unsurprisingly for someone who creates such lovingly crafted music, Hannigan is not exactly a shameless hedonist. Towards the end of the interview Hannigan excitedly explains that her favourite tour bus game involves making up collective nouns, her latest being “a ‘vile’ of little chefs”. She is suitably impressed when I inform that the technical term for a group of badgers is a “minge” (this is a genuine fact dear reader, look it up and see for yourself). She also admits that she doesn’t drink on tour for fear of performing with a hangover. “I’m definitely not getting on board the party train,” she laughs, “the boys do occasionally… there’s nothing worse than the feeling of being hungover or something. I’d rather not get aboard the party train and then get off at disappointment stop.”
When she takes the stage later in the evening Hannigan is true to her word, clearly missing the cup of tea she’s left waiting for her backstage, and at one stage exclaiming “there should be a word for that feeling when you know there’s a cup of tea somewhere, just waiting to be drunk.” It’s a cute sentiment from an endearing artist, but just because she’s likeable doesn’t mean Hannigan’s talent should not be underestimated. As her Duchess performance proves, punctuated with moments both stunningly ethereal and strikingly muscular, Hannigan has the potential to be truly special. If Hannigan’s music is like a fine cup of tea then it’s worth acknowledging that sometimes a good cuppa is unbeatable.