Lisa O’Neill: Cavan star

Her voice slices through the mini-amphitheatre’s air, with the end of every song met with rapturous applause

Lisa O’Neill
Lisa O’Neill

Stars: ****

That shiver you sense isn’t the cold Laois air, but the feeling on one’s skin when there’s a sort of genius at work.

Lisa O’Neill is like a hard to find beach in a hidden cove - you want to keep it to yourself but are conflicted by the temptation to show others.

O’Neill, a tiny Cavan woman wearing a striped sleeveless jumper her grandmother knit for an uncle who died two years ago, deflects song requests from a crowd in on the open secret, and sticks to a set of nine tunes.

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Her voice slices through the mini-amphitheatre’s air, with the end of every song met with rapturous applause. “There’s no train to Cavan,” she says before launching into a tune just about that.

Dwarfed by her guitar, O’Neill is nevertheless a giant of a singer and songwriter. It would be selfish not to alert everyone everywhere to her talent.