Hannigan Refined
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 REVIEW: www.musicomh.com
***1/2
Lisa Hannigan - Sea Sew
(Hoop) UK release date: 27 April 2009
Lisa Hannigan's debut album Sea Sew has been available in Ireland and the United States for some time now. She's not unfamiliar to the rest of us, however, having served as backing singer for Damien Rice's O and 9 albums. This gives you a fair idea of the musical genre in which she finds herself, though she seems a lot happier than Rice. Well, most people are, so that's not saying too much.
For more of a clue, you could point to the fact that she has recorded a duet with Snow Patrol front man Gary Lightbody that was featured on television hospital drama Grey's Anatomy. There is, of course, a nice parallel between Hannigan, who is of the Norah Jones school, and this most nefarious of television shows. From a distance, you despise its anti-intellectual obsession with personal relationships and its simpering take on life. Up close, the charm offensive tends to wash away your objections. Unless you really cling to them, of course.
So too with Hannigan. She's got a beautiful, rich, warm voice as well as a quite wonderful musical sensibility. It's just that she's stuck on one speed-setting: hotel lounge/waiting area. And she seems to sing about love an awful lot.
I Don't Know, which crops up midway through the album, is a perfect example. It starts out with a promisingly gothic run on the violin, then shifts gear into a twee little pop song about wanting to get to know a man: "I don't know what you smoke, or what countries you have been to. If you speak any languages other than your own. I'd like to meet you".
There's a whole lot of stuff she doesn't know about this guy, suffice to say. She does know that she wants to cook for him though. There's only one possible reaction, really: guiltily tap your feet while your inner voice points out in scalding terms that it's sad that so many female artists still seem to feel the need to sing about love and being in the kitchen.
That's all there is to this album, really. It's a guilty pleasure. Hannigan is much like Feist in her pop sensibilities, just without the indie credentials and spiky subject matter. It's a confection. Which makes a song like Pistachio all the more appropriate. It seems, for all the world, to be about eating the eponymous nut when you are feeling sad. Teeth, likewise, hasn't really got any, even though it's probably the toughest track on the album. Lille wraps things up in the sighing manner with which proceedings were opened.
All this shouldn't be read as overly critical: Hannigan is talented and Sea Sew is a pretty album. It's just if there is a lot of heart in the music, there's not a lot of brain. She's understandably massive with a certain crowd, but is probably not going to sit well with the people who prefer their folk mistresses to have a little more edge. She probably doesn't care - supplying a song for the Annals of McDreamy and McSteamy (Grey's Anatomy) is no doubt making her rich beyond her wildest dreams.
- Scott Sinclair
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4/26/2009, 4:02 pm
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