Popping over to Dingle for a short visit, Lisa Hannigan contributed her beautiful performance to Other Voices through an intimate session in Dun Chaoin. Having had wonderful success with her debut album ‘Sea Sew’, Hannigan has spent the past year traveling through the US with appearances on The Jay Leno Show and Stephen Colbert Report. 2009 also saw her nominated for The Choice Music Prize and two nominations for The Meteor Music Awards.

Lisa spent many years singing in choirs and musical choruses in school. A chance meeting with singer songwriter Damien Rice led to a long period of collaboration and development. Lisa spent the next few years touring the world, meeting wonderful musicians and friends, writing songs, forgetting then remembering how to ride a bike.
When this collaboration came to an end after seven years, Lisa was left with a notebook of songs and the desire and confidence to put them onto a record.

After a few months demoing and working through the arrangements, Lisa and her band, rehearsed and full of coffee and cake, went to the Cauldron studios in Dublin and spent fourteen days putting them on tape. Starting early in the morning, the band spent their days down in the basement studio, playing glockenspiels and harmoniums, violins and organs, trumpets and guitars, and sang until they were hoarse, emerging in the small hours to stagger home to sleep.

After mixing was completed Lisa’s mother Frances began knitting in preparation for the cover artwork. After spending a happy month stitching the lyrics onto rough cotton, and picking out the many references to the sea in the lyrics, Lisa decided to call the album “Sea Sew”.

Postcard from Lisa… mouseover to read