Praise for All Of This Is Chance
“The first indisputable classic of 2023” – Uncut (9/10 Album Review)
“Stunning, cinematic” – NPR Music
“Uncompromising, stunning, soul-shaking stuff.” – The Guardian, Folk Album of the Year
Following 2018’s collection Heard a Long Song Gone for the River Lea imprint, The Wren EP in 2019, and an adaptation of Bob Dylan’s ‘All the Tired Horses’ for the final scene of epic TV drama Peaky Blinders, Lisa O’Neill’s latest, her first album for the Rough Trade label, is entitled All Of This Is Chance and it’s out today.
Long since noted as one of the most evocative singers and writers in contemporary Irish music, All Of This Is Chance is a collection of new work that takes Lisa’s voice to greater heights, or depths, depending on which way you look at it.
Throughout this album Lisa’s gaze is often fixed on a sky full of animated birds, conniving, posturing, impostering, squawking scoundrels of the air, not unlike their human counterparts that operate beneath them. And beyond the birds, and the clouds, she is stargazing deep into the atomized constellations of outer space of which we ourselves are fragments.
But every story starts somewhere and Lisa O’Neill starts this extraordinary collection here back on earth, on Irish soil, hands in the land, taking cues from the great Monaghan writer Patrick Kavanagh. In 2020 The Abbey Theatre invited Lisa to perform in their historic outdoor adaptation of Kavanagh’s tragic 1942 masterpiece The Great Hunger on the grounds of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Kilmainham. The experience of immersing herself in and researching Kavanagh’s remarkable 6,000-word poem has contributed to some of the intertwining themes that inhabit this elemental album. When reading Kavanagh she was reminded of the speech of her Mother’s townland, Crosstoney.
The poem itself obviously references the great famine of almost a century earlier but it’s more specifically themes of starvation of creativity, the absence of distraction, and stimulation as imposed on the farmers hopelessly bound to the land – a famine of imagination, as it were – that inspired Lisa.
Throughout the album, Lisa is flanked by esteemed musicians, including long-time collaborator on bass Joseph Doyle, Kerry concertina guru Cormac Begley, the cinematic genius of Colm Mac Con Iomaire, Kate Ellis of the Crash Ensemble, pianist Ruth O’Mahony-Brady, drummer Lorcan Byrne, producer Dave Odlum on guitar, as well as Colm O’Hara on trombone, Brian Leach on hammer dulcimer, Mic Geraghty on harmonium and David Coulter on saw. Lisa’s young niece, Sadie-Mae O’Neill supplies a precious additional voice on ‘Old Note’. The overall effect is controlled yet feral, tempestuous yet tender.
On ‘Silver Seed’ the metaphors of nature, birds, berries, bees, blood… tumble beautifully from O’Neill’s lips over a clacking banjo as Mac Con Iomaire weaves a heart-aching fiddle over her shoulder. On ‘Old Note’ he delivers a divine orchestral accompaniment to a sad lullaby which explores another interwoven theme of this collection, that being the wall between us and an intuition with nature we once had. The song was inspired by an interview with the great traditional musician Tony McMahon and in its flow you can feel Lisa inhaling all the gifts of nature she holds so dear.
‘Birdy From Another Realm’ is another extraordinary composition. At this point it’s clear, and it’s obvious already throughout the songs leading up to it, on her fifth album Lisa O’Neill’s voice has found even greater depth and ability since we last heard from her in 2019. O’Neill’s own voice transcends words into raspy witchy incantations as her musicians cling to a barely tonal psychedelic cacophony around her.
The mood is calmed by ‘The Globe’, a slow yearning vision of the outside world, once a blue and green map on her bedroom wall. ‘If I Was a Painter’ was born out of a panic-attack on the London Underground and the realisation of how fast technology is evolving, and the growing gulf between generations. Whist, ‘The Wild Workings of the Mind’ was written in response to the Frederick William Burton painting The Meeting on the Turret Stairs and commissioned by the National Gallery of Ireland. The song, inspired by the origin story of abandon and death fits well into the thematic framework of the album. It is at times a dramatic album, addressing wonder, fear the suppression of the spirt and the disconnect from the land. It requires a gentle touch to close out. ‘Goodnight World’ is a lullaby, simplified as if sung to a child, despite its darkness.
Lisa O’Neill – All Of This Is Chance
1. All Of This Is Chance
2. Silver Seed
3. Old Note
4. Birdy From Another Realm
5. The Globe
6. If I Was A Painter
7. Wisht, The Wild Workings Of The Mind
8. Goodnight World
Lisa O’Neill – All Of This Is Chance is out now
Stream / Download All Of This is Chance: Stream / Download All Of This is Chance
via Rough Trade / Remote Control Records.
Lisa O’Neill
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