Lisa O’Neill

Venue:

City Recital Hall, Sydney

Date: 19/01/2024

2024 gigs are off to a good start. Playing Sydney as part of the Imaginatively named Sydney Festival, O’Neill had spent the previous few weeks travelling around the country playing gigs and spending time with First Nations people (she draws parallels with The Dreamtime and Irish lore, not to mention the treatment of Aboriginal and Irish people over the last 200 years).

Support was provided by Liam Keenan (playing under the moniker Meteor Infant). Some nicely played acoustic singer-songwriter stuff, worth a listen https://holdingcandles.bandcamp.com/album/ohio-street.

I knew very little about her before booking the tickets, but the blurb on the site sounded good, she had a song in Peaky Blinders, and her NPR Tiny Desk gig on Youtube was great. The stage was sparse and the lighting so subdued it was hard to see anyone’s faces. Starting off in solo acoustic mode, she was joined by a fiddler and someone playing hammer dulcimer and various other instruments (I’m dreadful at remembering names). For the second song she played an Indian Shruti box, halfway through she beckoned the fiddler on stage to take over, grabbed a string of bells then proceeded to run around the stalls shaking the bells before returing to the stage, “those are my bells” she said. We got a mix of traditional and self-penned songs, including a cover of Sinead O’Connor’s Three Babies, who she described as a ‘truth teller’. She introduced every song, which I sometimes find annoying as I’d rather just hear more songs, but it seemed to fit the evening, as if the introductions were part of the songs. I wouldn’t have known that the song Violet Gibson was about an assassination attempt of Mussolini by the daugher of the Irish Chancellor. O’Neill’s voice is incredible. A few times she asked for the monitors to be turned down and reverb taken out, but I couldn’t help thinking that she had such a piercing and powerful voice that it wouldn’t make any difference. She asked if we’d like to hear her sing a song without the mic (of course we said yes), so she sat on the edge of the stage with her Shruti Box singing a song by the incredibly prolific Trad. Arr.

She has a strong presence on stage, and gives the air of an artist who calls the shots and you wouldn’t want to mess with. Songs are abruptly ended with a heavy strum of the guitar, and she’s fond of the Ian Anderson stork impression (minus the codpiece luckily). A standing ovation at the end, and the audience left happy.

The audience:

Despite the hall not being as full as it should have been, the appreciative audience made up for it. A wide mix of ages, leaning towards the older generation.

It made me think..

‘Truth Teller’ is now she also describes herself. Some are big truths about humanity, others more personal, about her take on the world. It looks like this is another artist I need to delve into to hear more of her truths.

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