Lisa O'Neill: Live at Whelan's

Halfway through another packed-out Whelan’s show and Lisa O’Neill is already holding the audience in the palm of her hand. Taking a well-deserved seat by her electric piano O’Neill tells us about ‘Apiana’ – the story of an old piano of hers that sadly met its watery death during a flood at her Harold’s Cross house a few years ago. “That piano could tell a thousand stories and memories,” she sadly recalls.

Now those stories have been transformed into lyrics, the memories reborn in melody, and in a nutshell, that sums up what Lisa O’Neill is all about: Innocent yarns and sweet stories recalled and embellished with a unique colloquial charm adorned in mysticism and surrealism, all beautifully enshrined in song.

Flanked by the irreplaceable Mossy Nolan on her right and the multi-talented fiddle-wielding Aoife O’Sullivan to the left O’Neill had already delivered several stunning tracks to that point. The saccharine ‘Elvis I Give You Irish Stew’ draws smiles and laughter from the attentive crowd, while ‘No Train To Cavan’ – despite its simplicity – reveals a world of dodgy border dealings and charming rural idiosyncrasies.

With a turn of phrase or heartbreaking key change O’Neill also has the ability to devastate, particularly when exploring themes of love and loss on the anxious ‘England Has My Man’ and the touching ‘Neillie’s Song’. The transcendent ‘Dreaming’ – her greatest work to date – brings the curtain down spectacularly tonight.

Arguably one of the most singular Irish singer-songwriters of hers – or any – generation, O’Neill’s distinctive style has you hooked from start to finish. And in a world intoxicated by the everyday banality of ten-a-penny pop-stars an hour spent in the Cavan woman’s company serves as the perfect elixir.