Cavan songwriter Lisa O’Neill releases a new single today on Rough Trade Records – ‘Homeless In The Thousands (Dublin in the Digital Age)’ featuring Peter Doherty. This is not the first time O’Neill has written about social injustices on the cusp of a change. Songs like ‘Rock the Machine’ about unemployment in the Dublin dock lands, ‘When Cash Was King’ about the move to a cashless society and ‘Violet Gibson’ about the Irish woman who attempted to assassinate Mussolini in 1926 – this new song was written in response to the growing issue of homelessness in Dublin and Ireland.
Lisa met Peter Doherty last summer and this is the second song they have collaborated on. She also joined The Libertines onstage at the Dublin Olympia last September for a moving rendition of ’Night of the hunter’
Watch the video directed by Johnie Lyons below. Lisa also performed the song on The Tommy Tiernan Show on Saturday night (Jan 18th)
Listen Here: https://lisaoneill.rtrecs.co/homeless
From Lisa –
“We write what we see. I have lived in Dublin City for 24 years . As winter 2024 approached, this is the song that came to me. And here are some thoughts on why I’ve chosen to put it out at the start of this new year.
As our new Government make plans to rejuvenate our capital city centre, by spending to embrace the streets, its history, its buildings (occupied and empty) and its artists, I hope my song will help them recall what is truly at the heart of this, and any city or community around the world. At the heart of the city is the people of the city. They are the pulse. If the pulse stops, the heart stops.
Kindness is a human strength.
Housing is a human need.
January 2025, and Ireland has a housing crisis that is off the charts. It is 109 years since Padraig Pearce stood outside the GPO on Dublin’s O’Connell Street and read The Proclamation of the Irish Republic.
‘The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien Government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past’
Outside that same GPO today you will find several charities operating soup kitchens to help feed those in need. To name a few The Muslim Sisters of Eire, Hope in the Darkness Soup Run and Dublin Herb Bike – all of whom have been providing hot and nourishing meals, sleeping bags, care, attention and hope to people that need their services. These charities, amongst many others, have been operating for at least a decade…
Introducing by-laws to regulate these soup kitchens, as our newly formed government is trying to do now, will hide the harsh reality of homelessness from the eyes of society.
The problem will not go away by unseeing.
The problem can only be resolved by seeing and helping.”
Musicians who helped make this track – Peter Doherty for vocals and lyrical contribution, Brian Leach on Hammered Dulcimer and Banjo, Joseph Doyle on Double Bass, Colm Mac Con Iomaire on Violin, Cormac Begley on Concertinas and David Odlum for production and mixing.
It’s been a remarkable few years for Irish songwriter Lisa O’Neill. Her acclaimed recent album All of This Is Chance ranked highly on many critics 2023’s Albums of The Year Lists. Amongst the wealth of praise, Gideon Coe at BBC 6 Music picked it as his Album Of The Year. It was No. 3 in Mojo Magazine’s Folk Albums Of The Year, and No.24 in their main Albums Of The Year List. Bob Boilen at NPR deemed it his No.3 Album of The Year and it was one of Songlines’ Top 10 Albums Of The Year and Uncut Magazine’s No.17 Album Of The Year and at No. 33 with The Quietus. May 2023 saw Lisa make a memorable appearance on Later with Jools Hollland.
A raconteur in the truest sense of the word, O’Neill is a five-time BBC Folk Award nominee and her previous album Heard a Long Gone Song was named The Guardian’s 2019 Folk Album of the Year. She had 2 songs feature in Peaky Blinders – Blackbird, her own composition, and an adaptation of Bob Dylan’s All the Tired Horses soundtracked the final scene of the epic TV drama.
All Of This Is Chance took O’Neill’s inimitable voice to greater heights, or depths, depending on which way you look at it. Throughout all eight songs on this album, it feels like she is writing in a constant state of wonderment. Not only a portrait of the artist in love with nature, but one perplexed by the ever-expanding gulf between it and modern society. O’Neill sings across that divide while simultaneously digging deep into the land, eyes transfixed on a universe of colourful birds, and beyond them stargazing into the atomized constellations of outer space of which we ourselves are fragments.
Praise for All of This Is Chance:
“O’Neill is a cultural hero in her own right… a modern artist tapped into the ancient.” – New York Times
“The first indisputable classic of 2023” – Uncut (9/10 Album Review)
“Stunning, cinematic” – NPR Music
“A record that makes a lasting impact… beautiful and evocative” – Aquarium Drunkard
“Uncompromising, stunning, soul-shaking stuff.” – The Guardian
“A beautiful and bold album” – PopMatters
“In a word. Mesmeric” – Songlines (5/5 Lead ‘Top Of The World’ Review)
“You’ll be lucky to hear a better record all year” – The Sunday Times, Culture (5/5 Album Review)
“Quite simply a modern masterpiece” – The Morning Star (5/5 Album Review)
“There’ll scarcely be a better record released this year than All Of This Is Chance.” – Hot Press (9/10 Album Review)
‘‘All Of This Is Chance’ is an epic canyon of sense and sound… a timeless piece of work, wholly unbound by style or genre, a universal shot of medicinal magic.’’ – Folk Radio (Album Of The Month)
“You’re unlikely to hear a more original, more powerful, more breathtaking release than this all year” – Narc Magazine (5/5 Album Review)
“A strikingly individual album, a cohesive whole musically and lyrically and unlike anything you’ll hear elsewhere.” – The Arts Desk (4/5 Album Review)
Mojo (4/5 Album Review) / The Guardian (4/5 Album Review) / The Irish Times (4/5 Album Review) / The Yorkshire Post (Album of The Year)
