** Edited to add that ATO Records (thanks Court!) have been kind enough to let me have a couple of packs of Lisa's great badges/buttons to give away, so since it's obviously give away week on TreeFall, leave a comment and I'll pick a couple of winners next week **
When I was contacted last month by Lisa Hannigan's record company ATO, I was very excited. I've been a fan of Damian Rice for a long time and was therefore already a fan of Lisa's work, due to their previous 7 year long collaboration. So I was quite comfortable about being asked to have a listen to her latest album, Sea Sew and seeing if I would like to share it with you all here on TreeFall.
Lisa Hannigan is an Irish singer, songwriter, who has had much success and critical praise. At the moment (but not for much longer) she is best known for having accompanied the highly successful singer-songwriter Damien Rice. However, after seven years of working with Rice she was brutally fired just as she was about to go on stage with him at a gig in Germany
The firing, whilst shocking had the extremely positive side effect of giving Lisa the time she needed to write her beautiful new album Sea Sew. The result of which is both wonderfully haunting and melodic and has fast become my favorite drive to, cook to and relax to music (Lily's particularly keen on it too!).
Of course it might seem a little odd for me to be sharing a music cd with you on a craft blog, but Lisa not only writes great songs and sings beautifully, she also sews and cooks and has found a ingenious way of intermingling her love of craft with her love of music.
Lisa's mother Frances began knitting in preparation for the cover artwork whilst the album was being mixed, creating the back drop for Lisa to embroider and applique badge like pieces of linen and cotton on to (as well as becoming the wallpaper on Lisa website). Lisa then went on to hand embroider her entire albums lyrics on to rough cotton, picking out the frequent references to the sea as illustrations, and then using it as the art work for her cd. Which is just so cool.
Lisa's love for paper and textiles is also evident in her videos, with the video for “I don’t know”, featuring an entire landscape made from paper cutouts and her second video, “Lille”, features an amazing handmade pop-up book that illustrates the song.
All of this combines to make for a beautifully sung, and beautifully illustrated album that is going to be on my favourites list for a long time.
If you want to read Lisa's blog you can find it here and if you want to find out more you can find her website here. And thanks to ATO records you can also download a free mp3 of 'Lille' from here (no sign ups or anything, don't worry).
I truly love everything about this album, so much so that today I'm actually wearing a Lisa Hannigan badge! Well how could I resist, it's yellow and looks just like a button!
*Edited to add that you can see Lisa's vid "Lille" over on the Meet Me at Mikes blog*
* Thanks to everyone that commented on the Prints Charming post. Comments have now closed and I'll be picking the lucky winners on Wednesday*
