Lisa O’Neill – “Apiana” (audio) (Premiere)

It’s not often that a songwriter writes a song about a particular instrument; but, then again, Lisa O’Neill isn’t the kind of songwriter that comes along all that often. O’Neill’s latest studio LP, Same Cloth or Not, displays her affinity for atypical lyrical and musical ideas. On “Apiana”, accompanied only by a solo piano, she sings things that invite the listener to decipher what she’s saying. The song’s unusual chord patterns draw the ear and mind even further in.

The piano in “Apiana” is not merely a piano for O’Neill, however. She tells PopMatters, “A musical instrument has a voice which can move us so deeply that words are weak in explanation. They are charming things. They invite us to dance with them and to harmonise with them but more importantly, they invite us to journey with them and get lost beside them, in short, escapism and dancing with our dreams.

“Then a musical instrument surely nurtures a spirit of its own.

“I’ve met them in songs, where time stands still and I feel love and everything is black and white.

“There is no key for a punctuation mark on a piano.

“My piano was taken from me by a torrential rain on a dirty Dublin October night.”

Same Cloth or Not, which has already seen its release in Europe, will be released in the US on October 28th.