Interview with Lisa Hannigan
"I didn’t really think about having to sing the word ‘whiskey’ with my mouth open for five seconds while pints of paint were being thrown at my face..." - Lisa on the making of 'Knots' video.
‘And hold on, there’s nothing to pack, we know we’re not coming back’ sings Lisa Hannigan on ‘Home’ from her new album, which is hardly a wonder as her second album keeps her feet from standing still, her eyes unable to fix a point on the wet paint streak of horizon constantly rushing by. This is what happens when you have two albums of a global concern – home becomes an infrequent luxury. For Lisa Hannigan though, she eschews these concerns through music and her delightful charm, as we found out…
So you’re in Boston at the moment, aren’t you? Yes, I am. I’m in Boston in a taxi at the moment on a lovely, sunny day.
Sunny? I always imagine Boston in the cold, I don’t know why. I know! I don’t know if I’ve ever been here when it’s been so nice. I was quite shocked myself and where we’re in the taxi now, there’s blue sky and red leaves and just gorgeous, gorgeous turning of the leaves time. It feels like a real privilege to be here at this time of year.
It’s been a dream of mine to go to Boston and eat clam chowder. It just seems like a really fitting thing to do… Well that is exactly what we’re going to do now! We’re gonna have chowder and possibly… some crab cakes! When in Rome, that’s what you’ve got to do.
Wow, you’re living my dream. Yeah, I am. I will raise a soup spoon in your honour, Emma.
Now you’re no stranger to the US – you’ve gone down there very well over the last few years. Yeah, we’ve been there and done quite a few tours over the years, which have been brilliant. I actually love touring over here, not only for the crab cakes and chowder, but the gigs have been going really well and people have been singing along as the record’s been out a little longer. It’s great to see people singing along and yeah, I’m really loving it. It’s really a wonderful treat to casually travel for walk. It’s an incredible privilege.
So many people take such a long time to ‘crack’ America but it seems to have had a nice momentum for you – nothing too forced. You had some big appearances on US TV – do you think that’s where the momentum came from? Erm, well you just have to work hard and hopefully that will come and luckily I work with some great people who organise these things for me, or try and do them and I think that I just try and work really, really hard to get those things to work for me. But no, there’s been great momentum with the record and everything, and there’s a bit of luck as well and working hard – it’s a combination of all those things.
You must be a born traveller, but the first song on the new record is called ‘Home’. Is it important so have a little slice of home wherever you go? Do you have routines, or certain things you like to do? Yeah, I try to bring a little bit of home with me wherever we go and I think because a lot of the record was written while we were travelling, there is a kind of nostalgia that you get for home when you’re travelling. You don’t get nostalgia for home when you’re just at home getting on with it! When you are looking out of a train window, or whatever, it does make you think - or certainly makes me think more of home and the people who are there. It certainly does that for me, anyway.
I’ve asked this of someone before, but I’m interested in how you feel about it too – I wondered if you enjoyed the feeling of getting lost. Do you take it in your stride? I do! I’ve actually been blessed… my very mild superpower has been being blessed with quite a good sense of direction, so I do enjoy wandering off when I’m in a strange place. It’s also how I write my songs as well, is to try and wander off and maybe if I’ve got a line, I’ll often take it and go for a big long walk and start singing things into my phone as I find other lines. So yeah, I do try to get lost as often as I can when I’m away.
That shows innate bravery. I don’t think I’m as plucky when it comes to the journey… Haha, well you’ve got to get one of those phones that tells you exactly where you are and then you can’t get lost!
Yeah, we’re brave now we have GPS! Exactly – you can’t get lost any more.
Now Lisa, ‘Sea Sew’ was obviously the recipient of a Mercury and Choice Music Award nomination – do you allow yourself to think in context of awards for ‘Passenger’? No, no, because I think you’d drive yourself demented if you thought like that! I just wanted to make better record than the last one – that was always my aim with the record; I wanted to make something I was proud of, and of the development, that really expressed something that was solid, and I think I’ve done that. I’m happy; I don’t mind what happen now. If you thought that way, you’d only end up disappointed, I’m sure. You’ve gotta just make things, and then everything else is gravy.
I’ve read about your desire to create a texture with your albums – how much of this can you do alone and how much do you need the other people around you? Well with the songs I write them myself and then I bring them to the guys in the band and we arrange them together, so we flesh them out and sort of create the texture and shape them, so you know, that’s the collaborative process. With the artwork, I do all of that but then I get my friend Clíona to photograph them beautifully, so you know, it’s all good. There are a lot of collaborations along the way. You have to work with other people to really bring out the best in what you’re doing and inspire you, and stuff. I really enjoy working with people, you know, bouncing ideas off people and stuff.
The input you have with the artwork, and the brilliant concept you had for the ‘Knots’ video, do you see these elements in tandem when you write the songs? They come at different times; with the ‘Knots’ video that came way after it had been written and recorded and I always wanted to do a video where all the instruments were being played by something like that great Daft Punk video where people are dancing in time to the idea, and that’s the kernel of the idea. Because ‘Knots’ is just so rhythmical and precise – all the parts are quite precise – I just thought ‘yeah, this would work really well’, to have paint playing the instruments. Yeah, it didn’t necessarily translate that well because of course it was such an approximate medium, but the intention was there anyway! It was great fun.
I think if you’d have tried to choreograph it too much, it may have lost that one-take feeling though – - Yeah, I mean we choreographed it very solidly, we knew exactly what we were doing, but you’re shooting your super soaker in time and by the time it reaches my dress, the spatters aren’t quite in time!
That looked like it took some hella concentration from you! Ha! It did! I think because I knew it was obviously a one-take thing and there was no chance of there being another take and we’d worked out the choreography and everything, then when it started I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s really COLD!’ It’s really wet! I thought all these things as it was happening, you know, all my senses were going. I didn’t even think about how cold it would be! I just had to keep going, then the paint in my mouth I knew was going to happen, and I wanted it to happen visually but I didn’t really think about having to sing the word ‘whiskey’ with my mouth open for five seconds while pints of paint were being thrown at my face! It was a really wonderful experience though actually, and god we laughed at the end when we’d done it! I just couldn’t stop laughing – I couldn’t even breath with laughing and I kept going round hugging everyone in their white space suits.
‘Passenger’ was recorded in north Wales, wasn’t it? The pictures of glimpses of Snowdonia looked beautiful from Bryn Derwen… Yeah, it was beautiful.
Does the place you record have much bearing on the recording? Did Snowdonia press its weight upon you? Yeah, we were right under a mountain in this converted farmhouse. It was just stunning; a really, really stunning setting and it was just what I wanted, for us all to be piled into a place together and not be too far, but not have anywhere to go either. I mean the boys did venture into the village a couple of times for a pint but in general we were just stuck in this wonderful place. It had been recommended to me by my friend David; I was asking around just wondering if anyone knew of a residential studio in the country that had old things and just sort of suited my vibe. My friend David Koston had actually recorded Bat for Lashes there and he had loved it and so I looked it up online and it just sort of sounded like the perfect place. I went over to have a look at it and I just totally fell in love with it, it was just gorgeous. We had a wonderful week there and it really was a relaxed sort of process considering how fast it had been done. We all just loved it.
There’s some charming videos of you all there sitting around the table, eating and chatting – all being immersed in such a rural area, did you come out with quite a close bond? Yeah, I mean we would now anyway because we all lived together while we’re on tour in a tiny space for the last three weeks. You have to be family with your band otherwise it’ll drive you demented, so we are a family now. That time was just our summer holidays really – or our winter holidays, more like.
You recorded much of the album live – does that mean when you bring it to Norwich it’ll be a fair representation of the record we’ve heard? I don’t know now because we’ve been playing it live for a while and I haven’t heard the record for a while. It’s funny how far it does go, but yeah, it’s the same players. It’s settled in a bit more now, but it’s the same players, so it’ll certainly by a fair representation, I would think.
We often ask musicians that as you promise a fantastic show for us, what would you like from us, your audience? Ha, just yourselves please… yourselves and maybe some singalong vibes, that’d be good.
Great, thankyou!
Emma Garwood
Lisa Hannigan comes to the Norwich Arts Centre on November 15th. For tickets, go to www.norwichartscentre.co.uk.
