Happy New Year, everyone! Here’s to a fulfilling and enjoyable year for all. In the media yoke this week is “Paint This Life,” the upcoming release from Liz Hanley. Hanley is a singer and fiddle player of real renown and this album is the follow up to her 2013 debut “The Ecstasy of St Cecilia.” Does this new one exceed the standard she set over 10 years ago? It absolutely does – not only is it a better, more nuanced feature, but I think Hanley’s work here elevates traditional singing in the U.S. If that sounds up your alley, then this an album you’ll want to hear.
Hanley is a busy artist. She’s been involved with groups like the prog folk rock ensemble Frogbelly and Symphony and the chamber rock band Emanuel and the Fear, but she’s best known in Irish traditional circles as an alumnus of Mick Moloney’s celebrated group Green Fields of America, with whom she performed, recorded, and toured widely. If you’ve not heard them, her versions of “Cherry Tree Carol” and “Christmas in the Trenches” on Moloney’s album “An Irish Christmas: A Musical Solstice Celebration,” produced in partnership with Irish Arts Center are seasonal classics and particularly noteworthy.
She’s is also a New York City session favorite. In recent months, you might have caught her making the local rounds, including hosted sessions at spots like Mary's Bar, Iona, Slainte, Hartley’s, the Laurels and the Landmark. (Heads up: she’s about to start a new monthly session at Ginger’s in Park Slope on Jan. 15.) Hanley was also a featured performance at Tony DeMarco’s New York Trad Fest and most recently, had a prominent role at “Midwinter Revels: The Selkie Girl and the Seal Woman,” a seasonal show presented at Harvard University’s historic Sanders Theatre.
Hanley has also gigged recently (and does it regularly) with the Murphy Beds, who are featured prominently on “Paint This Life.” The ‘Beds, as they’re colloquially known, comprise Jefferson Hamer (vocals, guitar, mandolin) and Eamon O’Leary (vocals, bouzouki, banjo, guitar), are longtime collaborators of Hanley’s, and add a refined and most welcome artistic dimension to this project.
In addition to the Murphy Beds, this new album includes contributions by other noteworthy musicians, including Jen Hodge (bass), Rachel Ries (vocals & guitar), Benjamin Trott (cuatro), and the great Rob Jost (bass). Each adds strength to an already robust production.
There is a lot to truly enjoy here. Perhaps the entry into a discussion of this album is through Hanley’s mentors, Brian O’Donovan and Mick Moloney, to whom she pays touching tribute. O’Donovan , who passed away in 2023, was not simply a family friend, he was an important presenter, storyteller, and promoter whose radio program “A Celtic Sojourn” was an Irish American touchstone for nearly 40 years. Moloney, who passed in 2022 was a musician, teacher, folklorist, storyteller, and organizer, whose group Green Fields of America (of which Hanley was a member) set the standard for Irish music in America for over 40 years. Moloney was at first one of Hanley’s professors at New York University, but he grew to become a longtime friend.
“The Banks of the Lee,” the album’s opener, is given in memory of O’Donovan. Hanley’s singing of this Cork song– O’Donovan’s home county – is brilliant, evocative and a perfect complement to the harmonic background that Hamer and O’Leary provide. “You Lovers All,” which came from the great Frank Harte and to Hanley via Moloney’s influence, was a song she first became acquainted with in apprentice fashion. In the Green Fields, she sang harmonies to Moloney’s lead and it was only after his passing that she began singing it on her own. As you’ll hear here, she does a magnificent job, again with inspired Murphy Beds support.
But these aren’t the only highlights. “Jug of Punch” and “Briar and the Rose” are also very fine tracks. The former is one she borrowed from fellow Green Fielder Robbie O’Connell, and the latter she learned from Niamh Parsons. Both are heartfelt and meaningful adaptations of outstanding material.
The diversity of Hanley’s taste – as well as her sense of social justice – comes through on songs like “Dole Queue” and “Isn’t it a Pity.” Both are enchanting, as is “Paint This Life,” a song Hanley wrote for this album that has quirky, melody that feels very much a throwback to the late 1960s.
Speaking of, one of my favorites here is the track “St. Stephen.” A song taken from the Grateful Dead’s 1969 album “Aoxomoxoa,” Hanley first adapted it for one of Moloney’s New York City Winter Solstice shows. The hint of Dec. 26 made it an inspired choice, but because it’s a song that isn’t rooted in any particular season, it works brilliantly in this context. An absolute highlight.
“Paint This Life” is a superb album. The material Hanley’s selected is terrific, mixing songs I already associate with material that perfectly suits her style and and sensibility. Fans of Hanley’s and of traditional song will be thrilled. But in a larger sense, this album is reminiscent of the type of work I associate with the best of the contemporary Irish ballad scene. I think specifically of Dublin-based folks like Macdara Yeates, Ye Vagabonds, John Francis Flynn, Lisa O’Neill, and Lankum (see Will Hermes’s 2023 New York Times article “What’s Driving a Fresh Wave of Irish Music?”), but also the Murphy Beds here in New York, whose music has set a standard in the U.S. for a long time. Like all these folk, Hanley cares about a good song and makes it her business to adapt some in her own vision. Absolutely brilliant stuff and highly recommended. I don’t yet have a release date for this one, but it will soon be announced in Hanley’s newsletter, which I encourage you to sign up for by visiting her website here.
