I’ve been listening to a lot of Lisa O’Neill recently. I think I’m in love.
You know how it is. You get a recommendation from someone you trust1. You click on the link then, suddenly, you’re down the rabbit hole and into the wonderland.
Lisa O’Neill. Yeah. I know. I’m late to the party. She’s been making records since 2009 and I’ve only just discovered her. She’s had her music featured in Peaky Blinders. She sang at Shane MacGowan’s funeral. How have I missed out for so long? Well, you probably already know her work. But, if not, let me evangelise as only the recently converted can.
Listening to Lisa O’Neill is unsettling, intriguing, magical, beautiful, haunting, inspiring.
Her lyrics are sharp. They can smack you in the face with their anger. Anger that is right up there with Dylan’s “Masters of War”. They can inform you and educate you with their narratives. They can warm you and inspire you with passion and love. They can move you with a clarity and empathy that is right up there with “And the Band Played Waltzing Mathilda”
Her lyrics can intrigue you and charm you with their poetry. They can stay with you and get your brain working. Was it Ali Smith who said about literature: Ask not “What do you think of this book?”, ask “What does this book make you think?” That’s the magic of good writing. It points you in the right direction and kicks you up the arse so as to force you get your mind properly in gear.
Lisa O’Neill’s poetic words fly through the air like dandelion seeds on the breeze. Some float way over my head and stay tantalisingly out of reach when I try to grab them. Some land on sympathetic ground and germinate, nagging at my brain to understand their meaning, wrapping their roots around my neurons so they’ll stay with me forever.
The music is sparse, subtle, and gorgeous. Simply beautiful. A particular turn of phrase and a combination of notes – the hooks that mean you carry around those snippets echoing between your ears. (I know. That’s what I said about Hamish Hawk. A very different sort of music with a very different type of lyric. But what can be true of chalk can also be true of cheese.)
The arrangements are open, uncluttered, clear, and bright. The instrumentation is traditional and sympathetic. Guitar, yes, but also accordion, double bass, harmonium, cello. The songs are sprinkled with delightful musical jewels. Fleeting glimpses that last forever. Bright pebbles that catch your attention like the flash of a kingfisher over the river or the jitter of a butterfly over the meadow. Or like the smile that would spread over Sinead O’Connor’s face after she’d performed one of her favourite songs. Another friend who passed without saying goodbye.
Lisa O’Neill – The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right – YouTube
I’ve been listening to a lot of Lisa O’Neill recently. But I keep coming back to the place where we met. To “The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right” and the stunning video she made for it. The music fills me. Her words float in and out of my consciousness. They stay with me and haunt me.
She starts with the personal and moves on to the global. She sings of dreams and hopes. Of yearning to be wild and joyful. Then she turns to sing of all of the things that frustrate those hopes and sabotage those dreams.
She rails at the source of all death. At those masters of war she calls our leaders. And she calls them clowns and players and by doing so she shows how small they really are. Little people like Trump and Johnson and Musk and Thiel. These are not Great Men.
She sings of terror. Of murder. Of climate chaos. Of the genocide of a people. Of the destruction of a planet. And she unleashes more anger at the devastation of the beauty that is our world and its life.
And as she sings, the faces in the video listen. Studiously. Matching and reflecting the panorama of emotions she conveys. The concentration and the contemplation. The empathy and the harmony. The sadness, the tears, and the hurt.
Yet this song seems to me, somehow, to be laced with hope. Somehow, briefly, a few of those faces break into a smile. A softening around the mouth. A glimmer of light in the eyes. How can this be when she sings of the destruction of Gaza, of the burning of the planet, of the famines across the world, of the murder of the beautiful children? I think it is the irresistible force in her lyrics, her tunes, her arrangements. The anger, the rage, and the passion that she ignites cannot be defeated. The wind of terror she warns of cannot reach us and overwhelm us. That is where the hope lies.
She makes me believe that people still have the power. If we can harness that so that we all pull in the same direction, we can maybe bring back those old friends that we thought had passed. Like Love, Peace, and Understanding. Like Freedom, Kindness, and Rain.
Then this wind of ours will blow so far. It will blow right across the world and such a change there shall be.
- Thank You @marzid.bsky.social ↩︎