2023 was a remarkable year for Irish songwriter Lisa O’Neill. Her acclaimed new album All of This Is Chance arrived on Rough Trade Records in February and ranked highly on many critics Albums of The Year Lists. Lisa finished her touring with a sold out show at Vicar Street in Dublin, and she also performed an emotional rendition of Fairytale Of New York with Glen Hansard and members of The Pogues and The Dubliners at Shane MacGowan’s funeral in Co Tipperary.
Amongst the wealth of praise for All Of This Is Chance, 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.
On top of all that, last week the actors Margot Robbie and Cillian Murphy both spoke of their love of her music in a radio interview.
Lisa began 2024 on tour in Australia and New Zealand, a year which also sees her take on the prestigious role of a Fellow of The Seamus Heaney Centre in Belfast.
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.
Her adaptation of Bob Dylan’s All the Tired Horses soundtracked the final scene of epic TV drama Peaky Blinders. All of This Is Chance features orchestral masterpieces such as the ambitious and cinematic Old Note, and the title track which was inspired by the Monaghan writer Patrick Kavanagh's epic poem, The Great Hunger, as well as stirring contemplations on nature, birds, berries, bees, and blood ring out over a clacking banjo throughout the album, dusting and devastating all those in its wake.
All Of This Is Chance takes 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 colorful birds, and beyond them stargazing into the atomized constellations of outer space of which we ourselves are fragments.
Praise for All of This Is Chance:
“O’Neill is a cultural hero in her own right… a modern artist tapped into the ancient.” - New York Times “The first indisputable classic of 2023” - Uncut (9/10 Album Review)
“Stunning, cinematic” - NPR Music
“A record that makes a lasting impact… beautiful and evocative” - Aquarium Drunkard
“Uncompromising, stunning, soul-shaking stuff.” - The Guardian
“A beautiful and bold album” – PopMatters
“In a word. Mesmeric” - Songlines (5/5 Lead ‘Top Of The World’ Review)
“You’ll be lucky to hear a better record all year” – The Sunday Times, Culture (5/5 Album Review)
“Quite simply a modern masterpiece” – The Morning Star (5/5 Album Review)
“There’ll scarcely be a better record released this year than All Of This Is Chance.” – Hot Press (9/10 Album Review) ‘'All Of This Is Chance' is an epic canyon of sense and sound... a timeless piece of work, wholly unbound by style or genre, a universal shot of medicinal magic.’’ - Folk Radio (Album Of The Month)
“You’re unlikely to hear a more original, more powerful, more breathtaking release than this all year” - Narc Magazine (5/5 Album Review)
“A strikingly individual album, a cohesive whole musically and lyrically and unlike anything you’ll hear elsewhere.” - The Arts Desk (4/5 Album Review)
Mojo (4/5 Album Review)
The Guardian (4/5 Album Review)
The Irish Times (4/5 Album Review)
The Yorkshire Post (Album of The Year)