Lisa O’Neill / Iona Zajac
St George’s Bristol
20 February 2026
Ged Babey’s fascination with Lisa O Neill began with one song. Then the mini-album, The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right blew him away. What would she be like live?
Faultless. Magnificent. Utterly spell-binding. One of the best performance I’ve ever seen.
“It really is like being in the presence of One of The Greats” *
There was pin-drop silence during her performance. No one spoke a word. You hardly dared breathe… Lisa O’Neill’s breath-taking voice and songs and music filled every corner of the room.
St Georges’s is a beautiful airy venue with perfect acoustics.
Iona Zajac was the perfect support – delicate but strong voice. Interesting songs and a funny story about a mis-identified ‘koala’.
I should have taken notes because O’Neill’s masterclass of a performance wiped any details of Iona’s set from my memory. Red Corn Poppies is the one that stuck.
O’Neill takes to the stage and introduces the band in a conversational way rather than a vaudevillian manner, then its straight into to If I Was a Painter.
Trying to work out exactly what it is about Lisa O Neill that makes her so brilliant is difficult – because it’s everything about her and how it all ties together. The voice – which can sound like a child or an 100 year old woman: her phrasing, dialect, just the way she sings certain words or phrases (in the digit-al age). The humanity and depth in her songs: Her lack of an onstage ‘persona’ – she is just herself. Smart and funny, keen to tell us the back-story of ‘Mother Jones’ and her love of the poetry of Christina Rossetti.
There are plenty of old favourites in the set: Silver Seed, Old Note, Pothole In The Sky, Rock the Machine… but she keenly promotes the latest record, out that day on vinyl which she proudly displays.
Homeless in the Thousands (Dublin in the Digital Age) is tear-jerking masterpiece live. The Bleak Midwinter is nothing really to do with Christmas so gets an airing.
When Cash was King lightens the mood and I was personally very pleased it made the set. Her pronunciation of ‘Charles’ is beautiful.
The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right is an international anthem for our times and gets a standing ovation and the encore is of course a sublime Goodnight World
‘How can you possibly review this?’ My friend said. I knew what she meant.
An ordinary-looking, diminutive Irish woman who has the talent and soul of Nina Simone and WB Yeats? That sounds ridiculous, but the hundreds of people that came out of St George’s smiling afterwards might well agree.
Among them a veteran of many Lisa O’Neill gigs, who I happened to sit next to, the local legend Big Jeff. ‘You’ve never seen her before?’ He said to me incredulously, ‘You, my friend, are in for a treat’.
I never thought ‘Folk music’ could be this soulful and inspirational – but Lisa O’Neill is no ordinary folk-singer, she is “One of The Greats”.
12 inch vinyl edition of The Wind…
Lisa O’Neill – Official Website
All words Ged Babey Photos by Hazel Winter Quote * Gerard Starkie
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