Altsounds - Lisa Hannigan Interview

Remember pop up books? And remember when you got paper and folded it many times over, then cut out a man and then he turned into lots of men? If the memory makes you smile you need to see this, it will make you happy:

Lisa Hannigan and her wonderful team take the craft to a whole new level in her new video, I Don't Know

We will come back to pop up books, but for now Lisa Hannigan has recently released her first record Sea Sew and it's marvelous! A beautiful piece of art to see and hear, home spun with friends and family over two weeks in a barn.

On the eve of the last show of her highly successful UK tour we had a wonderful chat:

[altsounds] You have a very strong ‘arts and crafts’ vibe - even now you’re so colourful - the red and blue (skirt and top)!

LH: Thank you!

[altsounds] But there is a wonderful arts and crafts theme to the videos you’ve made recently, like you’re new clip for I Don’t Know is a visual treat! How long did that take?

LH: It took a weekend…of cutting and it was myself and this girl Maeve Clancy she also made the Lille books…she is an amazingly artistic, wonderful person that I know and I said to her I wanted this wood thing and I had the whole idea of the video and I was basically like, ‘you need to draw me this thing’ and she literally drew the whole thing…and then we spent a weekend and me and my mother and my brother and just everybody listening to the radio and cutting!

[altsounds] I love this family collaboration – you and your brother and your mum. You seem to have done a few projects together, like your album’s artwork you and your mum sewed together?

LH: She did the knitting, she knit the outside and I did the stitching…but everyone’s pretty arty-farty!

[altsounds] In your family?

LH: In my family and I do, if I need something done, I know that they’re brilliant at it and I always return to them for help and that sort of thing. My brother’s very arty farty and makes films and writes films and he’s brilliant at all that sort of stuff, in fact he was always much better at drawing and stuff than I was. I always asked my big brother for help!

[altsounds] It’s so beautiful and colourful. Your songs too sound very colourful to me, like very evocative sounds and words…what do you think about, where do these come from?

LH: In term of the ‘homemade’ vibe, I think the instrumentation’s quite…I wanted to have that sound. Like the harmonium’s pretty squeaky and slightly foggy pitch wise.

[altsounds] But soothing too?

LH: Yes but it does have...it is slightly creaky! There’s nothing kind of shiny or anything like that. And all the strings, they’re real and we wanted to – myself and the band - to use a proper double bass. There’s not very many electric instruments at all. A lot of the drum pattern things too are someone played on drums, someone played on card board boxes and things like that ....and all of the squeaky bits or footsteps or giggles and stuff in the background, a lot of those things we kind of left in…you probably can’t even hear them a lot of the time but….

[altsounds] They add to the fabric of sound.

LH: Yeah

[altsounds] So, like the artwork, the music has a real homemade feel with everyone participating…

LH: Yeah all the boys are great about it when I get them to do all those sort of things. Paint the wall in the video and things!

[altsounds] When you’re writing, when you want to get a song, a story, out, what do you do?

LH: Each one is different in terms of writing what it’s about, you know. It’s just ah….I suppose things just happening in my life really.

[altsounds] Can you tell me what Lille is about?

LH: It’s about loads of different things. Each verse kind of is about a different situation which gets a bit confusing. Like the ‘he’s’ are not the same person often, which is very confusing! For me it’s just sort of a story book, a story book feel and not about…I don’t want to talk about what each bit is about 'cos often people’s ideas of it are more interesting than the real life thing you know! But I think in general Lille’s about a journey, about feeling quite hopeless and then becoming hopeful essentially.

[altsounds] That really comes across in the song, well to me!

LH: Good. I want you smiling at the end of the tune see.

[altsounds] It’s beautiful. Would you share an experience – perhaps a conversation or collaboration or something – that really shaped you musically?

LH: Well I did a little work with Herbie Hancock. We did a song and it’d gone really well and then we went back and recorded a few more and I’m hoping we’ll do more again. That was amazing to see him work. I was really young when I met him. I mean up to that point I’d always try to make things a bit different when I was given a song to sing and that’s fairly standard, but then, watching him work, that each time he played it it wasn’t about playing it right you know and singing it just right. It was about finding something new every time he played it. And he didn’t play the same thing twice! You know it wasn’t about that, it wasn’t about 'this is the way it is' and you just have to keep trying to get the best version of that. Each new beginning of a song was a whole new opportunity to have fun and make something different...you know in his phrasing or in the melody or even just little rhythmical changes…I just thought that was amazing and that really affected my thinking on it: It’s not about getting it just right, it’s about getting it just then.

[altsounds] How did this idea manifest itself in the making of your new record, Sea Sew?

LH: I think I wasn’t as focused on having the exact right part. I mean a lot of the melodic parts were quite precise but for the singing I tried not to be too worried about finding the exact right way of doing it and then doing take after take of that, you know, just doing loads of takes and whichever take felt the best to me, using that one, you know…Before that I probably would have been a bit more ‘how do you get the ultimate melodic line?’ for this song. But I decided not to worry about that anymore.

[altsounds] Ok, so when it comes to song writing - what instrument do you write on by the way?

LH: I’m not very good at anything really. I’m not very good at the guitar or the piano. I can kind of doodle and mess and practice something loads and be alright, but I’m definitely not like a guitar player or anything.

[altsounds] But you play guitar on Lille?!

LH: Yeah I can do that but I can’t strum the guitar at all! Like, someone’s trying to teach me and I can’t! It’s so weird!

[altsounds] (Laughing)

LH: It’s really weird! I think it’s just a rhythmical thing I can do, but I can’t strum anything.

[altsounds] But the song writing – is it something you think a lot about, that takes a long time?

LH: Well, it does... sometimes, like - I’ll just go through a few songs and say how I wrote them: Say Venn Diagram I had an autoharp and I just found those two chords…and they’re very simple but I didn’t know what I was playing…and then I’d just go for a walk and, I had a little melody, and then I’d get the words over time.

[altsounds] Over time - like 6 months, weeks, a day, an hour?

LH: Some would be like months, in that they’re, I’d get a first verse and then I don’t know what else to do and then it would be some months. Some would be a day, some would be just one walk, like Lille was just a walk around the city. Last time I wrote I wrote to my umbrella. I had this nice umbrella and it was like ‘thump…thump thump’ and I just started singing along to the rhythm of it….But each one is totally different because I’m not good enough at any one instrument for that to be my instrument…but I’m glad because they all end up quite different.

[altsounds] Yeah, that’s cool….why did you make Sea Sew?

LH: I just always, I mean I knew I had a record in me…I mean, I always wanted to make my own record…I didn’t really know what was going to be on it, I didn’t know when I was going to make it…

[altsounds] What kind of support did you have?

LH: My management and my friends in the band…we all just kind of did it together. We released it in Ireland on our own and up here on our own and just….tried to do it as independently as possible and hire people that are brilliant at their stuff…it’s brilliant as well that you can put stuff out that really is just your own because obviously marketing and things, there will always be that kind of…the things you don’t have control over and I get very upset about those kind of things you know…

[altsounds] Of course, sure.

LH: But then you can like home make stuff, you know, and put it out on the internet or, just in general you know, you just make stuff and eventually it’ll come to light….and try to keep up with doing that, like I said to the lads in June, ‘we’re going to go make some more videos,’ and just home made stuff.

[altsounds] Have you started writing for the new album yet?

LH: I have a few songs. I don’t know wether they’ll end up on it, we’re still touring this one.

[altsounds]What do you hope people will get out of listening to your music?

LH: I just hope they like the music, that’s all you could really want. I did meet this wonderful family at a gig in Manchester and the girl, their daughter was there she was maybe fourteen, and she had sewn her own top and they said ‘she’s gotten really into sewing’…and I was like….I actually!

[altsounds] Welled up!

LH: Yeah oh mad! So that kind of thing, that really…and I’ve seen the record on some craft blogs and stuff which is amazing, like that’s…I never would have thought that, it was such a…it’s such a little idea for me, you know, it’s just such a small ‘I’d really like to do this so I’m going to use this opportunity to make a little sewing book.’ And for people to, especially craft blogs, for people to like it it’s…I’m overwhelmed.

[altsounds] How beautiful. Lisa congratulations and thanks for the chat.

Lisa Hannigan on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads