Lisa Hannigan: 2016

Irish singer and songwriter Lisa Hannigan had great critical success with her first two albums—2008’s Sea Sew was nominated for a Mercury Prize and 2011’s Passenger took Hannigan on a tour of over two years.

But she came off of that tour with an serious problem: a bad case of writer’s block. Hannigan struggled to write for months and months, traveling between Dublin and London, but she found herself in a creative purgatory. One day, an unexpected email arrived from The National’s Aaron Dessner asking if she wanted to collaborate and Hannigan agreed … and the foundation of her third album began to fall into place.

Hannigan calls her new album At Swim and Dessner produced it, even bringing her to his studio in Hudson, New York to record. It’s a wistful, wild, and majestic album, one that looks at the challenges of love and mortality with an unflinching, compassionate eye.

When Hannigan visited FUV with her bandmates Heather Broderick and Ross Turner, she played three songs from it and discussed the challenging five year journey to write, record and release this album.

[recorded: 8/9/16]