Lisa Hannigan finds her ‘sea’ legs as a solo singer-songwriter

By Naila Francis
Published: February 6th, 2009 | 9:00am

In the wake of the release of her solo debut, Sea Sew, in Ireland last year, the words “intriguing” and “idiosyncratic” seemed to follow Lisa Hannigan as doggedly as the rumors that swirled on the heels of her abrupt departure from Damien Rice’s camp almost two years ago. “I certainly appreciate that take,” says the Irish singer-songwriter gamely. “I’d much rather have that than to sound like other people.”

Sea Sew, previously available stateside only through iTunes, was released on these shores February 3 on ATO Records, with Hannigan set to launch her first headlining tour of the United States February 11. And if the woman who for seven years served as a gossamer foil to Rice’s overwrought intensity has emerged from his shadow with a penchant for the peculiar, audiences don’t seem to mind. Hannigan was warmly received when she gave them a taste of the album’s loamy eclecticism opening a string of dates for Jason Mraz last year. “We had so much fun,” says the 27-year-old songstress. “The audiences were great. I don’t think very many of them had any previous notion of me anyway so that was fine. I think it was a pretty clean slate.”

By now, the tale of her summary dismissal from a flourishing partnership with Rice moments before the two were to take the stage in Munich, Germany, in 2007 is old news. And Hannigan herself seems over it, responding to inquiries with a curt diplomacy that suggests her weariness on the subject. “We’ve gone our separate ways,” she says.

But she nonetheless remains grateful for her time with the brooding bard who lured her away from her studies in art history and French at Trinity College Dublin years ago when, freshly divested of his band Juniper, Rice caught Hannigan’s performance at a classical singing competition and promptly invited her to join his new project.

“I was very committed to what I was doing and very busy with it,” she says of those years, in which she also collaborated with artists like the Frames, Mic Christopher, and Herbie Hancock. “But I was gathering songs. Some were better than others. I wasn’t massively confident in all of them. I was really just finding my feet. I didn’t even consider myself a songwriter until the last few years.”

Sea Sew should further dispel the notion. Recorded over 14 days in Dublin with a cast of friends — including former Rice bandmates Shane Fitzsimmons on double bass, Vyvienne Long on cello, and Tom Osander on drums — the disc is at times playful and poetic, at others melancholic and disconcertingly eerie. Filtered through a fragmented prism of folk, classical, and chamber pop, the songs nonetheless compel with deliberately skewed but skilled arrangements of acoustic guitar, strings, drums, keyboards, glockenspiel, harmonium, and, it seems, whatever instrument happened to strike the band’s fancy.

“We couldn’t afford to go to a studio for more than two weeks, so we just went in and did. We had so much fun, no sleep. It was just two weeks of pure joy,” says Hannigan. “I wanted a warm, creaky kind of sound to (the album). I didn’t want it to be polished …. At the end of ‘Ocean and a Rock,’ I added the harmonium, and it has this mad creak. I think it sounds like seagulls at the end of the song.”

The sea references are abundant in lyrics that brim with vivid details, whether she’s flirting with a would-be-lover, offering solace to a friend, or navigating life’s bewildering passages. With the CD accompanied by a hand-knit sleeve and hand-sewn — yes, hand-sewn —lyrics, Sea Sew seemed an apt title.

“The word ‘sea’ I had to sew quite a bit. I wanted to get those elements in because they were important to the record,” says Hannigan. “[The title] reminded me of seesaws and I just liked the sound of the words together and the childish quality to it.”

Odd? Not to the woman who derived an entire song from a math concept. “I don’t think the Venn Diagram ever had its own song before,” says Hannigan of the ships-passing-in-the-night charmer. “It’s the only thing I remember from all my years of math.”

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Lisa Hannigan MySpace.