Irish singer Lisa Hannigan sounds a little over the subject of Damien Rice, her friend and former collaborator. The prickly Irish troubadour known for his stinging, original songs and equally stinging temperament summarily fired her early last year just minutes before the pair were to take the stage in Munich, Germany.
Mention the moment, and, no surprise, Hannigan's natural chirpiness takes a hit.
"Yeah, he just told me that was the case. Yeah . . . ," she trailed off, then closed the subject with a diplomatic flourish. "It's all for the best. It's fine."
Actually, for Hannigan's career, Rice's snap decision appears to have been something of a godsend. Long singled out in his reviews for her own sweetly fragile vocals, Hannigan now has a charmingly idiosyncratic new CD, "Sea Sew," to call her own.
Self-released in mid-September, "Sea Sew" has won praise for its playful lyricism and imaginative arrangements, complete with glockenspiel, xylophone and "squeaky harmonium." It's garnered airtime on KCRW and a station-sponsored show today at Largo at the Coronet. She'll also play the Greek Theatre on Saturday, opening for Jason Mraz.
Recorded this spring in a mad rush in Dublin -- "We had about three hours sleep a night, it was so much fun," Hannigan explained on the phone from Boston during the tour's second week -- the songs of "Sea Sew" had been accumulating in her notebooks for a couple of years. Hannigan buckled down with her crew in her drummer's erstwhile donkey barn southwest of the capital to hash out the album's final form.
"I wanted that sound you get when something's recorded pretty fast," Hannigan said. "It automatically sounds quite cohesive if you do that. You really have to get on with it. You don't have any time to be complacent or figure out our guitar parts for three days."
Hannigan is a small-town girl, raised in the wet countryside above Dublin in County Meath, home to the hill of Tara and a trio of pre-Stonehenge-era burial sites. A Michael Jackson fan in the early days, she wanted to be Maria Callas. Instead, Hannigan studied French and art history at Trinity College -- that is until Rice's debut CD "O" stunned critics and propelled him and his bandmates out of Dublin.
Cutting classes short was fine by Hannigan. "I really wanted to go college to meet people and go to plays and see bands play and things," she said. "I certainly wasn't going to end up being a professor or diplomat or whatever."
