The words flow as if ocean waves surging onto shore during a storm of melodious making. They’re a litany of limits, contradictions and descriptors, the very things that make us who and what we are. “I am an honest kind of liar,” she sings in the first line, before observing that she’s a daughter, dreamer, stranger, friend, even a trojan horse.
The “she” is not the veritable ocean, though one could make the argument that her songs are as deep and metaphoric as it. That is, they are when they’re not stark confessionals. For those unfamiliar with Irish singer-songwriter Susan O’Neill: She first turned ears with her 2018 debut, Found Myself Lost, and won more listeners with her 2020 duet album with Mick Flannery, In the Game. In 2022, she received the RTE 1 Folk Award for Best Original Folk Song for “Now You See It,” the title track to her 2022 EP.
Her vocals are a grainy delight, somewhat reminiscent of Adele circa “Chasing Pavements,” while her songs sound as if they’ve been around forever and a day. The stirring “Meet Me in the Silence” from the Now You See It EP, for instance, could well be a lost treasure from Peggy Lee’s 1953 Black Coffee album—or is that Melody Gardot’s 2009 My One and Only Thrill set? Either/or, it’s noir folk with jazzy overtones; the only thing missing is a mellow cornet bleating softly in the background.
To return to the top: “Drive,” her latest single, is something of an epiphany set to song that she wrote in one brief sitting. In the press release, she explains, “I’m trying to be more honest with myself. If I can know my own chaos, chill with it, wear it like a parade of paradoxes, this would be me trying that on.” Hidden deep within the corners of the song is a possible reason for the spurt of self-reflection: “Look at you/You thought you knew me/You were toying with emotions/And you thought I wouldn’t notice/I won’t give that part away.” And though, by song’s end, she claims to be a lazy sort who fails a thousand times, we know better: You don’t make songs this addictive if the couch is your second home.
The song is available from the usual suspects. She directed/filmed the video herself; it’s as engaging as the song is charming.
The Old Grey Cat 