Rough Trade Records are excited to announce that a new 6 track EP by Cavan songwriter Lisa O’Neill will be released on Nov 19th. The first single from the EP is out today, ‘The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right’, is a moving and powerful song for our times, which Lisa describes thus, “I began writing this song in November 2017 and I finished it in January 2025. My song is a reaction to the unsettled times that we live in.” Watch the video below now, directed by Ellius Grace and featuring musicians Kae Tempest, Kevin Rowland, Spider Stacey of The Pogues and Iona Zajac plus renowned Nigerian/Irish poet Feli Speaks, actresses Olwen Fouéré and Hazel Doupe and actors John McArdle and Jack Walsh amongst many others.
The EP is comprised of a group of six tracks that Lisa considers to fit together well, they include the haunting rendition of Bob Dylan’s ‘All The Tired Horses’ that Lisa recorded to soundtrack the closing scene of the final episode of Peaky Blinders, plus ‘Homeless In The Thousands (Dublin in the Digital Age)’ featuring Peter Doherty, released as a stand-alone single in January of this year. It was 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.
Added to these are a new song and recent live favourite ‘Mother Jones’ about the activist and union organiser Mary G. Harris Jones, who in 1902 was called ‘the most dangerous woman in America’ – following her organising of miners against mine owners leading directly to the introduction of America’s first child labor laws. The EP is completed with a stunning version of the seasonally topical ‘The Bleak Midwinter’ and a moving reading of the James Stevens poem ‘Autumn 1915’.
Lisa O’Neil
The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right
EP Tracklisting:
- The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right
- Mother Jones
- All The Tired Horses
- Homeless In The Thousands (Dublin in The Digital Age)
- The Bleak Midwinter
- Autumn 1915
It’s been a remarkable few years for Irish songwriter Lisa O’Neill. Her acclaimed recent album All of This Is Chance reached number 1 in the Irish Indie Charts and 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 Holland.
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 two 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 Lisa O’Neil
“Giving voice to the disenfranchised is something she does so well, with a particular affinity for women – “Woman is powerful when not restricted”- she says…. And she is emblematic of this, with a free singularity that can fold in difficult subjects, such as homelessness…” – The Irish Times – live Gate Theatre review
“The Cavan songwriter has grown in stature in recent years as a valued chronicler of the disenfranchised. Songs of social, political and cultural issues preoccupy her as she proves as adept a storyteller as the playwrights long associated with this room.” – The Sunday Business Post – live Gate Theatre review
“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)
Watch The Video For ‘Homeless In The Thousands (Dublin In The Digital Age)’
Watch The Video For ‘Old Note’
Watch The Video For Silver Seed
