Lisa Hannigan has a voice you might recognise thanks to her exploits on Damien Rice’s masterful albums ‘O’ and ‘9’. You may even hold the Irish singer in high regard thanks to the short but powerfully sweet contributions she made to Rice’s records, particularly ‘Unplayed Piano’. But now she’s moved in her own direction with debut album ‘Sea Strew’ with this the first release. Comparisons with Hannigan’s previous work don’t seem relevant; her new song is bubblier than she’s known for. That’s not to say it’s handclappingly joyful, but because the song is performed at mid-tempo with a bit of high-string twanging here and a trumpet there, it’s side-smiling cool. Hannigan’s known for a kooky persona when not performing and here in the world of music she’s equally quirky through prying lyrics. In the song she poses questions to an imaginary other about bruised hearts, books and all scatters of culture, culminating in what sounds like a musical version of any idiosyncratic young girl portrayed in recent American indie films, like a blasé but unmistakably confident type from Juno or Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist. Perhaps the most impressive feature of her first solo effort is that it wouldn’t sound out of place on any of those soundtracks.
