Lisa Hannigan - Sea Sew reviews
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| Ew |
 Sea Sew's cover art, depicting Lisa Hannigan's handiwork, reflects the homespun intimacy of the Irish singer's debut. She's got a strong track record as a backing vocalist with Damien Rice, Herbie Hancock, and Snow Patrol, and her whispery, confiding voice makes this the perfect album for cozying up by the fire on a winter-chilled Sunday afternoon. Cello, violin, piano, and harmonium paint delicate pastel colors, but the arrangements rarely sound wimpy or morose. Hannigan may be introspective, but she knows how to coax a melody into the sunlight. B+...full text |
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| Slantmagazine |
| Best known for her contributions to Damien Rice's extraordinary O and its underwhelming follow-up 9, Irish singer-songwriter Lisa Hannigan finally makes her solo debut with Sea Sew. What's most interesting about the record is the way that it reflects her collaboration with Rice: Using these songs as evidence, Hannigan either played a major role in developing the sound that has become Rice's trademark or she has used that particular sound as the primary template for her own work. If that gives the album a level of postmodern ambiguity, what Sea Sew makes clear is that Hannigan is a serious talent in her own right. With its horn section, shuffling rhythm, and slow-building crescendo, "I Don't Know" could make for a leftfield pop hit like Feist's "1 2 3 4," while the stately sophistication of opener "Ocean and a Rock" places the emphasis on Hannigan's warm vocal performance. Later, on the clipped, jagged "Keep It All," the tone of her delicate upper register surprises for how it favorably recalls Beth Gibbons, and the song's production stands out by foregrounding its drum machine backbeat and a contrapuntal, plucked string figure that eventually gives way to a haunting choral chant. Hannigan takes more risks with the arrangements of her songs here than Rice has with his (the discordant string section that opens Hannigan's "Courting Blues" resurfaces over the course of the song is a particularly high-minded highlight), and those arrangements are well matched to the idiosyncratic syntax and imagery of her lyrics. Unassuming and refreshingly lacking in the pretension of so many contemporary folk-pop records, Sea Sew makes for both a challenging and a charming proper introduction for Hannigan....full text |
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| Popmatters |
Lisa Hannigan is best known for her work with Damien Rice, and indeed it was her breathy vocals that elevated songs like “Delicate” and “9 Songs” above normal singer-songwriter fare. But with this, her first album as a solo artist, Hannigan puts her time with Rice firmly behind her. This is an accomplished, affecting album, better than anything Rice ever recorded and wholly without the blandness that characterized his work from the first.
Though Sea Sew is a folk album, the music here is thrillingly lush. Hannigan’s backup band is talented and varied, with trumpets, cellos, violins, glockenspiels, and others making appearances. Listening to the album I found myself fixing in on certain small flourishes—the triumphant, faraway trumpet in the intro to “I Don’t Know”; the military-style snare in “Ocean and A Rock”; the sinewy, uneasy interplay between bass, violin, and Hannigan herself in “Keep It All”. Sure, there are a couple clunkers—“Splishy Splashy” can’t quite overcome the silliness inherent in its lyrics, and the dramatic build in “Teeth” comes too late to save the song from it’s lugubrious first two-minutes. But the sublime beauty of “Sea Song” always makes me forget such quibbles....full text |
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