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Music
Fri 16 December 2011 at 8pm
Lisa Hannigan
Tickets: €22
Between writing her first album – 2008’s ‘Sea Sew’ – and its eagerly-awaited successor, Passenger, Lisa Hannigan’s life has changed in oh-so-many ways. She penned her first songs in hope rather than the expectation that the wider world might find a use for them; knocked out at rehearsals in a freezing barn in the Irish countryside, the record was produced at a friend’s studio within a fortnight. Yet the self-released ‘Sea Sew’ went double platinum, was nominated for the Choice Music Prize and the Mercury Prize in the UK, and saw Hannigan play bewitching guest spots on the likes of ‘Later…With Jools Holland’, ‘The Late Late Show , ‘‘The Tonight Show With Jay Leno’ and ‘The Colbert Report’.
Having spent just two weeks recording her debut album, you might think that Lisa and her band would have relished the opportunity to stretch out the recording process on 'Passenger'. Hannigan had other ideas. Keen to capture the electrifying synergy that her musicians are apt to summon on a live stage, the band, together with producer Joe Henry (Elvis Costello, Ani DiFranco, Solomon Burke, Loudon Wainwright III) went to Bryn Derwyn studio in Wales and made the record in a week, followed by a day of strings and horns in London.
Much of 'Passenger' reflects the journeys Lisa has taken, particularly whilst touring her first record. "I chose 'Passenger' as the title after living with the finished songs as a whole," she says. "Many of them were written while I was away from home or on the road, and the feeling of transience and nostalgia that this constant travelling evoked seemed to seep into every song." The overarching theme of the record, then, is "those loves, heartbreaks, confusions and friendships that we take with us through life, over years and continents, enduring the passage of time."
This emotional landscape is captured quite literally on the album's cover, which collates maps of the main places where the record was written (Dublin, Brooklyn, West Cork). As ever, it's beautifully detailed effort from Hannigan, who perforated the images into paper and shot light through them, creating a stunning map of her music in the process.
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