Lisa O'Neill

Name: Lisa O'Neill
Start: 2026-03-03T19:30:00+00:00
Location: Hallé St Peter's

Schedule

Tue, 03 Mar, 2026 at 07:30 pm

UTC+00:00

Location

Hallé St Peter's | Manchester, EN

Rough Trade Records is excited to release a new six-track EP by Cavan songwriter Lisa O’Neill on 19 November. The first single from the EP, The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right, is a moving and powerful song for our times, which Lisa describes thus, “I began writing this song in November 2017 and I finished it in January 2025. My song is a reaction to the unsettled times that we live in.” The video, directed by Ellius Grace, features musicians Kae Tempest, Kevin Rowland, Spider Stacey of The Pogues and Iona Zajac plus renowned Nigerian/Irish poet Feli Speaks, actresses Olwen Fouéré and Hazel Doupe and actors John McArdle and Jack Walsh amongst many others.
The EP is comprised of a group of six tracks, they include the haunting rendition of Bob Dylan’s All The Tired Horses that Lisa recorded to soundtrack the closing scene of the final episode of Peaky Blinders, plus Homeless In The Thousands (Dublin in the Digital Age) featuring Peter Doherty, released as a stand-alone single in January of this year. It was not the first time O’Neill has written about social injustices on the cusp of a change. Songs like Rock the Machine about unemployment in the Dublin dock lands, When Cash Was King about the move to a cashless society and Violet Gibson about the Irish woman who attempted to assassinate Mussolini in 1926 – this new song was written in response to the growing issue of homelessness in Dublin and Ireland.
Added to these are a new song and recent live favourite Mother Jones about the Irish activist who emigrated to America and became a union organiser, Mary G. Harris Jones, who in 1902 was called ‘the most dangerous woman in America’ – following her organising of miners against mine owners leading directly to the introduction of America’s first child labour laws. The EP is completed with a stunning version of the seasonally topical The Bleak Midwinter and a moving reading of the James Stevens poem Autumn 1915.
In recent months Lisa has been touring extensively both in her own right and also with The Pogues, celebrating the band and Shane McGowan’s legacy across the UK and North America.
It’s been a remarkable few years for Irish songwriter O’Neill. Her acclaimed recent album All of This Is Chance reached number 1 in the Irish Indie Charts and ranked highly on many critics 2023’s Albums of The Year Lists. Amongst the wealth of praise, Gideon Coe at BBC 6 Music picked it as his Album Of The Year. It was No. 3 in Mojo Magazine’s Folk Albums Of The Year, and No.24 in their main Albums Of The Year List. Bob Boilen at NPR deemed it his No.3 Album of The Year and it was one of Songlines’ Top 10 Albums Of The Year and Uncut Magazine’s No.17 Album Of The Year and at No. 33 with The Quietus. May 2023 saw Lisa make a memorable appearance on Later with Jools Holland.
A raconteur in the truest sense of the word, O’Neill is a five-time BBC Folk Award nominee and her previous album Heard a Long Gone Song was named the Guardian’s 2019 Folk Album of the Year. She had two songs feature in Peaky Blinders – Blackbird, her own composition, and an adaptation of Bob Dylan’s All the Tired Horses soundtracked the final scene of the epic TV drama.
All Of This Is Chance took O’Neill’s inimitable voice to greater heights, or depths, depending on which way you look at it. Throughout all eight songs on this album, it feels like she is writing in a constant state of wonderment. Not only a portrait of the artist in love with nature, but one perplexed by the ever-expanding gulf between it and modern society. O’Neill sings across that divide while simultaneously digging deep into the land, eyes transfixed on a universe of colourful birds, and beyond them stargazing into the atomised constellations of outer space of which we ourselves are fragments.
This is a 14+ show. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.
Price: £29.50 adv
Info/tickets: https://www.heymanchester.com/lisa-oneill#info