Lisa O'NeillNobody sings like Lisa O’Neill. Even a person of the erroneous opinion that she is not a great singer would so admit. She emphasises and enunciates uniquely and while her voice often gets described as ‘harsh’ it is only harsh in the way a heavy rain sweeping across a drought-ridden land is harsh. It’s a voice that knocks you off your cloud, makes you pay attention and – for those who are aware that she is in fact a great singer – is one you will never tire of hearing.

And so with this in mind a crowd gathers for a quaint little event in a minimally furnished room in the Joinery on Stoneybatter’s Arbour Hill for three musical performances of which Lisa is the main act. The performance opens with The Bluebirds in their debut performance. They do some sweet covers of songs as variant as Quizás, Quizás, Quizás (in English and Spanish) and Jimmy Rodgers’ In The Jailhouse Now and it’s all highly enjoyable. They’re followed by Ain’t Saint John who’s delightfully unpretentious piano ballads like Grump and Grow Yourself contribute much to the laidback and good-natured atmosphere.

Then Lisa takes to the floor. Explaining how most of the song we are about to hear were written right here on Arbour Hill she plays them solo – four on guitar the rest on piano – and in the true folk tradition they are quite simple songs, ones that could easily be memorised. No Train To Cavan is a perfect example of how her song-writing seamlessly melds American folk music tropes with a distinct Irish personality. All the motifs of trains and going home are lifted straight from the traditional songs of that part of the world but it feels as naturally Irish as anything a Clancy or a Dubliner ever sang.

What is distinctive about Lisa that doesn’t come across on the audio is just how much she physically puts into each song. She has her own unique rhythm when strumming the guitar that goes from ferocious and aggressive one moment then falls back to something more measured and melodious in an instant but it never sounds wrong. Her piano playing is similar. She throws her weight behind a chord then draws her hands back together in the middle of the keyboard and hunches over it with a scowl, looking something like the phantom of the opera. Then in an instant, her shoulders drop and she looks up with one finger on each hand pressed lightly on the keys and grins softly.

She can sing aggressive, she can sing vulnerable and when she sings Dog Baby she’s proven she can sing funny as well, all in the space of maybe two songs. What’s remarkable is the effortlessness of it all. The song Luthier’s Limbs is about the journey from planted seed to constructed piano which could just as easily be a metaphor for Lisa as an artist. Like the Luthier she does not plant or chop down the wood that she uses to creeate, she takes these elements that exist through someone else’s efforts and crafts them into something distinctly her own. She is a vessel for the true folk tradition but more than that she is one of the most engaging musicians in the country.