Lisa O’Neill speaks as she sings, in a broad Irish brogue that reflects her upbringing in Cavan, rural Ireland. Her voice will never be described as beautiful. It is guttural, fierce yet plaintive, marking her as among the most distinctive of contemporary folk singers. When she performs at Womad New Zealand, listeners will hear an Irish experience shorn of cliché and stereotype. Riverdance O’Neill isn’t.
“I sing just the way I am,” says O’Neill. “I’ve been writing songs since I was 11 and I moved to Dublin when I was 18 because I knew I could be around other musically minded people there. I sang at sessions in pubs and I busked a little, but I got bullied and robbed and I lost my confidence. Not in my songs, mind you. I chipped away at them while working in the service industry.”
O’Neill’s recent singing of songs by Bob Dylan and Shane MacGowan has helped win her wide attention. The former’s All The Tired Horses featured in the Peaky Blinders series finale, and the latter’s Fairytale of New York (sung as a duet with Glen Hansard) was performed at MacGowan’s funeral. “I’m a big fan of Peaky Blinders and Bob Dylan, so it was such a pleasure to sing All The Tired Horses. We recorded it in Cabinteely, South Dublin, over two days, with the footage of the final sequence playing on a loop. I’d look at Cillian Murphy’s beautiful face as he rode off into the unknown and try and sing the song with as much feeling as I could.
“I knew Shane and was asked to sing Fairytale at his 60th birthday party and he was happy with it – delighted, actually, with how we sang his song – so this is why, I think, we were invited to sing it at his funeral. That meant Shane was having a say as to what got sung at his funeral – and by whom. I loved being around Shane as he was great company and one of the great lyricists. He had his finger on the pulse, sang of the homeless, drug addicts and drunks, the Guildford Four when they were still imprisoned – he was calling it out. And this harks back to the importance of songwriting, to tap into that potential.”
O’Neill, 41, had already come to wider attention with her 2023 album All of This Is Chance, but she served a long apprenticeship, self-releasing her first three albums from 2009 to 2015.
“When you’ve got nothing, you really have no idea of anything beyond writing a song, followed by another one until, finally, you think, ‘Oh, I’ve enough for an album here.’ It’s stone after stone after stone. I believed in the work. I never felt sorry for myself and was happy working in the service industry and making music in my own time.”
O’Neill’s breakthrough came when Geoff Travis signed her to Rough Trade, the label from which he launched The Smiths and many other successful left-field artists. Her 2018 album, Heard A Long Gone Song, proved a revelation.
“I’m not in awe of the music industry,” says O’Neill. “Music is my favourite language and I want to take care of it. I’m very happy to be on Rough Trade. It’s an artist-led label – most of the music industry is profit-led – so I feel I fit there.”
Dublin group Lankum signed to Rough Trade in 2017 and the quartet, who mix Irish drones with elements of psychedelia and post-punk music, made a powerful impact.
Their success saw Travis sign O’Neill, alongside John Francis Flynn and Ye Vagabonds, from a now-heralded Dublin folk scene.
“Dublin’s very small in the sense that if you play trad music in Dublin, you will soon get to know all the other people who are playing music,” says O’Neill. “The sessions [in pubs] are very communal – John Francis Flynn and I hosted one that lasted five years.”
O’Neill bristles at any suggestion she’s part of an Irish folk revival. “I don’t think of what’s currently under way in Dublin as a folk revival, as it would only need a revival if the music was near death. And it’s not.”
Lisa O’Neill appears at Womad New Zealand, New Plymouth, March 15-17.
