Lisa O'Neill

Irish folk singer and songwriter Lisa O'Neill weaves compelling narratives through her singular vocal presence and sharp focus on rural particulars. Breakthrough arrived via the 2013 album Same Cloth or Not and the 2018 release Heard a Long Gone Song, each earning a nomination for Ireland's Choice Music Prize. She further developed her introspective and singular approach across the richly textured, autobiographical fifth album All of This Is Chance, issued in 2023.

Raised in Ballyhaise, County Caven, O'Neill relocated to Dublin at age 18 for music studies at Ballyfermot College. Over the ensuing years she balanced service-industry employment with steady refinement of her compositional and stage craft, issuing her first full-length recording Has an Album in 2009. That modest regional success drew the notice of British singer/songwriter David Gray, who invited her to open and perform as a bandmember on his 2011 North American tour. Her second album Same Cloth or Not followed in 2013, securing her initial Choice Music Prize nomination. In 2016 she joined the debut outing by the Indian-folk-jazz ensemble Yorkston/Thorne/Khan, whose members include Scottish singer/songwriter James Yorkston, double-bass player Jon Thorne, and sarangi player and vocalist Suhail Yusuf Khan; later the same year she delivered her third album, the spare and mordantly comic Pothole in the Sky.

Heard a Long Gone Song marked her first project for River Lea Recordings, the traditional-music subsidiary of Rough Trade Records, and blended traditional folk material with original songs. The collection featured a rendition of the Shane MacGowan composition "Lullaby of London" alongside the incisive working-class anthem "Rock the Machine," which received the Best Original Folk Track honor at the 2019 RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards. Also in 2019, O'Neill issued the three-song EP The Wren, The Wren and supplied a version of Bob Dylan's "All the Tired Horses" for the closing sequence of the television series Peaky Blinders. Two 2022 singles, the orchestral "Old Note" and the austere "Goodnight World," both reappeared on the 2023 album All of This Is Chance.