There’s a couple of albums being released in the autumn of 2024 that I’m really looking forward to playing, and high up on that list is Now In A Minute, the second solo full-length from Irish songwriter Susan O’Neill. I’ve loved her first album Found Myself Lost (2017) and the ep Now You See It (2022), as well as In The Game (2021); the duet record with Mick Flannery. But, the first three singles from the new record – Drive, Bright Eyes and Sign Of The Times – are truly something else. “I’m really happy with the album. It’s unlike anything I’ve made before and I don’t know If I’ll ever make something like it again. It’s its own thing. A perfect snapshot of time.” Back in May, Susan O’Neill and her wonderful band joined me in Kilkenny and recorded Bright Eyes and a cover of The Gardener, by The Tallest Man On Earth.

“It’s playful and somehow also tapping on much larger themes.”

“I love The Tallest Man on Earth as a musician and vocalist. I think that his voice has a rasp that goes straight to the heart. The Gardener in particular, I love when an artist writes in a way that they set up a scene and then they flip it, you know? And I just love that he’s saying: ‘There ain’t no puppy in your leash’. I love ‘I guess he’ll read it in the smoke now. And soon to ashes I’ll return’. It’s got a deeper sense of the cycle of Earth. It’s got a deeper sense of the cycle of what it is to be human. There’s, you know, a mention of jealousy. There’s that kind of human condition of what you’re searching and seeking in somebody else in ‘So I could stay the tallest man in your eyes’. At the same time it’s playful, and it’s somehow tapping on these much larger themes. That kind of writing is my favorite, and it’s also very hard to do. So, I love that song. I really love that song.”

“I started to realize this was alchemy.”

Since the release of the critically acclaimed collaboration album with Mick Flannery In The Game, Susan O’Neill has toured extensively across Europe and North America, performing both with Flannery and solo on headline tours, festival stages, and as an invited guest to an array of artists including Phoebe Bridgers, Valerie June, Calexico and Jamie Cullum.

There was music around Susan O’Neill, growing up. “It was very specifically traditional music. But there were a lot of band nights with heavy metal music. There were youth clubs. There were gospel choirs. There were brass bands. Yeah, there was a lot of music and it formed me, musically. Oh, totally, completely. It’s the gathering of community and sharing sound. And when people gather and offer themselves up to the greater thing. I was very young when I started the brass band, maybe 12, and I have a lot to thank them for because that showed me what collective intention around sound can do.”

“I used to know only one thing; that I felt different every time I finished practice than when I went in. I started to realize this was alchemy. This is true magic where you take one form of energy and you transform it into another. I used to get goosebumps. I used to feel the hairs on my neck stand up at the back. I just knew it was doing something, and I couldn’t explain what it was. So, the sense of something greater was presented and shown to me, and I couldn’t put it into words, but I just knew I had to follow it.”

Gathering of community and sharing sound, that’s probably the best way to describe what it felt like, upstairs at Bridie’s in Kilkenny, from the moment Susan O’Neill and her band members walked in, all through recording and packing everything up. There were there to share sound. With each other, and now with you.

Pre-order Now In A Minute

Click on this link to pre-order Susan O’Neill’s new album Now In A Minute. Do it now, in a minute.

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Keep watching

Thank you for watching and enjoying this session. You’ll probably like some other sessions from The Influences’ archive too, like these earlier ones we filmed at TakeRoot festival.