Cavan songwriter Lisa O’Neill announces a new 6 track EP will be released on November 19th. The first single from the EP is out today, ‘The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right’, is a moving and powerful song for our times, which Lisa describes thus, “I began writing this song in November 2017 and I finished it in January 2025. My song is a reaction to the unsettled times that we live in.” The music video was directed by Ellius Grace and featuring musicians Kae Tempest, Kevin Rowland, Spider Stacey of The Pogues and Iona Zajac plus renowned Nigerian/Irish poet Feli Speaks, actresses Olwen Fouéré and Hazel Doupe and actors John McArdle and Jack Walsh amongst many others.
The EP is comprised of a group of six tracks that Lisa considers to fit together well, they include the haunting rendition of Bob Dylan’s ‘All The Tired Horses’ that Lisa recorded to soundtrack the closing scene of the final episode of Peaky Blinders, plus ‘Homeless In The Thousands (Dublin in the Digital Age)’ featuring Peter Doherty, released as a stand-alone single in January of this year. It was not the first time O’Neill has written about social injustices on the cusp of a change. Songs like ‘Rock the Machine’ about unemployment in the Dublin dock lands, ‘When Cash Was King’ about the move to a cashless society and ‘Violet Gibson’ about the Irish woman who attempted to assassinate Mussolini in 1926 – this new song was written in response to the growing issue of homelessness in Dublin and Ireland.
Added to these are a new song and recent live favourite ‘Mother Jones’ about the activist and union organiser Mary G. Harris Jones, who in 1902 was called ‘the most dangerous woman in America’ – following her organising of miners against mine owners leading directly to the introduction of America’s first child labor laws. The EP is completed with a stunning version of the seasonally topical ‘The Bleak Midwinter’ and a moving reading of the James Stevens poem ‘Autumn 1915’.
In recent months Lisa has been touring extensively both in her own right and also with The Pogues, celebrating the band and Shane McGowan’s legacy across the UK and North America. An extensive tour of Ireland begins at the end of the month and ends with a show at Dublin’s Vicar Street on December 21st.
Stream / download ‘The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right’ here.
