Album review: LISA HANNIGAN, Passenger

This Irish singer songwriter’s debut was Mercury nominated, being dismissed as the “token folkie” two years ago. Passenger is too complex and densely structured to be so lazily measured, and is a rich and rewarding listen.

Hannigan’s light lyrical touch is flecked with humour – “Please don’t bungee jump/Or ignore a strange lump,” she urges in Safe Travels. All of which seems in keeping with the theme of the album title, concerned with the baggage of life rather than taking exotic travelogues.

Home is a strident opener, horns and strings underpinning a swooping vocal with a tremulous quality. Joe Henry produces with great musical intelligence, all restraint with the mildest of raucous undertones. The title song does a clever job of recycling the melody of Johnny Cash’s Ring Of Fire, while the ghost of her time spent in Damien Rice’s band is exorcised in O Sleep, a duet with Ray LaMontagne. This is like a languid boat trip down a lazy river, all dappled sunlight and the occasional fast ripple of current. Banjos are plucked and horns gently parp away to themselves, nimble and muscular or quietly busy in the background.

Knots is a thing of pastoral beauty, a 21st-century take on the soft focus Flake advertisements on 1970s television, with a sting in the tale as the strings build to a discordant crescendo.

COLIN SOMERVILLE

Download this: Home, What’ll I Do

PIAS, £11.99

Rating ****