Lisa Hannigan unpacks her rucksack

She learned her trade in singer-songwriter Damien Rice’s band and for her new solo album she worked with Joe Henry: Lisa Hannigan has a nose for talent that can show her own talent to best advantage.

The singles “Knots” and “What’ll I Do”, both modest radio hits, were a strikingly flamboyant step on the way to Passenger, Hannigan’s second solo album, an album about being en route, transition, and change. But doesn’t that title sound a little passive? Or, to put it another way, does she not feel she is more of a traveller than a passenger? “But I’m not talking about myself,” explains the Irish singer. “The songs are the passengers. They slip into your rucksack, wherever you are going. That ‘human’ baggage holds the album together.” There are both cheerful and sad songs, about, among other things, missing people that are dear to you and friendship – and Hannigan wrote them all on the road. “Hence the street maps on the cover! I love cartography, so I connected the district in Dublin where I used to live with Brooklyn, Baltimore, and a little fishing village in West Cork. In a strange way they fit together.”

On your previous album, Sea Sew, you literally sewed your lyrics together. How did you incorporate the street maps into the artwork for Passenger?
Lisa Hannigan: The little points of light you see in the artwork are all wee holes that I perforated the street map printouts with. Then I held my collage in front of a light box, so that light shone through the little holes. I photographed that. That handiwork took me a good month, but I just love tinkering and I love album sleeves too. Even as a child I always wanted to stroke them. Just as much care and love goes into that as into the songs.
Was it not strange to spend seven years touring as a backing singer in Damien Rice’s group before making your debut as a solo artist?
Hannigan: On the contrary, I was learning all the time. I needed those years to build up my self-confidence and to get to know my voice better. And just to look around a bit and learn what life is and what a musician’s life involves. I’m glad I am not in the shoes of all those YouTube hypes who have no experience and from whom all of a sudden so much is expected. I count myself lucky, too, that all those terrible songs I wrote as a teenager will never find their way onto the Internet. [laughs]
Producer Joe Henry’s influence is prominent. How did your paths cross?
Hannigan: He saw me at the Kate McGarrigle Tribute Concert and sent a really sweet mail to my manager, asking whether we could work together. In the studio it was all about the performance for him. That a track felt right was much more important than playing it “correctly”. A great relief, as my favourite recordings are just like that. Take “Smokestack Lightning” by Howlin’ Wolf: that’s the way it is, it sounds so rough and yet it gets you in your soul. Above all, you have to be able to believe a performer.
“9 Crimes”, which you sang with Damien Rice, has become a classic. Do you find it more difficult to perform a song you didn’t write yourself?
Hannigan: No, because you don’t have to have written it yourself to feel it. I could empathise immediately with “9 Crimes”. I would never record something if I couldn’t get in touch with the feeling in the song. While I’m singing, I automatically go looking for the emotions that belong to it. That goes without saying, I think, when you go through life as a singer-songwriter.

Lisa Hannigan
12/5 • 20.00 (+ Lianne La Havas, Kiss & Drive), €11/14/17
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