LISA O'NEILL - Pothole In The Sky - LP - Vinyl

LP - Black Vinyl 

This is Lisa O'Neill's third album, following a witty and charming debut Has An Album, and the follow-up Same Cloth or Not that marked her as a serious artist, a contender, a voice, a forked tongue. And now Pothole in the Sky - the artistic leap that had to be taken. And Oh boy has she taken it. These are wonderful, unique full of the sort of glorious individual word-play that could only come from the pen of O'Neill.

O'Neill's voice goes to all sorts of places throughout the course of this album, and the music provided by Emma Smith, Seamus Fogarty, Joseph Doyle, and Mossy Nolan follows her like a dark swirling storm, often bringing to mind the loose impressionism of the Dirty Three. On Planets O'Neill delivers her most extraordinary vocal and lyrical performance to date. It is remarkable and on this form she could go toe to toe with Nick Cave at his most fire and brimstone. Except O'Neill's prose is elemental and mysterious, not angry.

There is some truly brave singing on this record. For instance, the odd high-pitched flourishes on Nasty, or the shrill parlour style singing on Black Sheep. The latter features some of the best accompaniment too, a mellifluous psychedelic montage that literally sets sail one-minute-thirty in as Lisa goes off on one of her patented hypnotic stream-of-conscious word-play trips. The album closes out on a succession of brilliant songs. The Banjo Spell is a tender ode to the aural folk tradition without being throwback. In fact it has a big lush modern feel to it. And The Hunt, featuring guest fiddle and banjo from Colm Mac Con Iomaire and Glen Hansard respectively, is just another meandering epic Lisa O'Neill number, twisting and turning and changing its phrasing and tempo to suit the story and accommodate the words. She makes it sound easy. But it's not.

Tracklist: 

A1        Pothole In The Sky
A2        Red Geansaí
A3        Planets
A4        To Know About The Divil
A5        Nasty
B1        Seven Sisters
B2        Gormlaith's Grieving
B3        Black Sheep
B4        The Banjo Spell
B5        The Hunt