The willowy Lisa Hannigan brought contrasting texture and a tougher-than-she-looks female timbre to Damien Rice’s live sets and his albums O and 9 – until he sacked her last year. Rice being the yowelling evolutionary mid-point between David Gray’s acceptable angst and James Blunt’s awful ardour, a far more positive legacy of his partnership with Hannigan having “run its creative course” is her solo career.
This gig, in Westminster’s baroque gem of a church, was her first in London under her own steam, and packed with well-wishers. To date, her debut album, Sea Sew, has only been released on CD in her native Ireland (it’s also available on her website), but Hannigan has already played at New York’s Radio City and LA’s Greek Theatre, supporting Jason Mraz, currently No 1 in Billboard’s Hot Adult chart (their definition, not mine). That tour seems to have given her five-piece band, including trumpet, violin and xylophone, a polished aplomb. They filled out the album’s fragile folk-pop with splendidly jaunty arrangements.
The opener, “Sea Song”, was almost a light rumba, while “I Don’t Know” skipped along with the buoyancy of early Beth Orton. Hannigan was a beaming presence throughout, lending a touch of Nouvelle Vague to proceedings – I mean both the wittily melodic covers band and a certain gamine sophistication.
Her voice, essentially a wide-eyed whisper, shares its coy inflections with Joanna Newsom, but with the kookiness dial turned down some. On an off-centre, noirish take on Bert Jansch’s “Courting Blues”, however, it had a stronger, seer-like tone. Two further covers were similarly effective: Bob Dylan’s “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, sung like a little girl challenging some ogre in authority, and the standard “Lady Is a Tramp”, delivered – with more vocal vim – at nearly a slo-mo zydeco pace.
“I spin you through a delicate wash” went one of Hannigan’s lyrics: well, her songs’ colours came out bright, crisp and joyful. The exceedingly winsome “Lille” was a farewell nobody wanted to end; to encore with Iron and Wine’s rousing “Free Until They Cut Me Down” showed Hannigan knows her blues chops. Rice’s next work is a plainer prospect without her. His loss is our gain.
