EP review

Lisa O’Neill

The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right

(Rough Trade Records)

6 track DL EP 

out now

12 inch vinyl edition out 20 Feb 2026

Our Score

As LTW compiles it’s ‘Albums Of The Year’ this fails to qualify as it’s an EP – 6 songs lasting 32 minutes – but it is the most striking, sobering and brilliant collection of songs released this year. ‘I’m rich in soul and  history’ Lisa sings, like the Pogues and Sinead O’Connor before her, a soulful and powerful voice against injustice,  says Ged Babey.

Pray for the dead / but fight like hell for the living…

It was Lisa O’Neill who sang the female part of Fairytale of New York at Shane MacGowans funeral two years ago. She had a song on Peaky Blinders. She should be properly famous but I’ve not heard or read about her much in the mainstream media. But that is probably how she prefers it…

This EP, like the title song, will stop you in your tracks and change the way you think about music – and what it’s for.

There is no-one more surprised than me about the impact these songs have had on me. I can’t stop listening to them.

The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right is quite possibly the saddest song you will hear, a lament for mans inhumanity to man. It has a religious, hymnal quality… and soul… and compassion… and will, in time come to be regarded as a song as great and important as ‘Shipbuilding’. Or maybe even ‘Strange Fruit’, even though it is not as subject specific, more wide-ranging.

(Lisa says) – Natural disasters devastate and turn our world upside down, BUT it is the man-made greed-motivated unnatural disasters put upon our beautiful planet and it’s people that inspired this song. 

At over six minutes, it’s a song which demands your undivided attention. Part lullaby, part lament, part plea – a protest song which attempts to cover everything with a compassion and resignation that things look bleak – but as it builds and swells it lifts you, knowing that there are (thousands of) others listening and feeling inspired to pull together. It is a ‘beautiful’ song, despite being the darkest anthem of recent times.

Beautiful children starved to the bone.. 

The first three lines took on even more significance when I learned of an old friends death. (We were at an all-boys school together exactly the same years Farage was hissing in the ear of a certain class-mate. I’ve been thinking back, trying to remember if anyone we were at school with reached that level of sheer cuntishness. Inking a certain symbol on desks at aged 12 was not about deep-seated hate, just an naïve, punk rock thing to do to upset the stiff upper lip brigade of old farts, so the answer was no. No-one was making plans like Nigel.)

I like the way Lisa sings the word ‘leaders’ as it sounds a bit like bleeders to me.

Homeless in the Thousands was released in January 2025, again as a stand alone single. Since it’s release, the housing crisis has become evermore acute, and I feel it’s essential to reinforce the message. (LO’N)

The vocal on this is magnificent. It really does sound like Nina Simone (to me) towards the end.

I have to admit that Pete Doherty is a genius on this. He plays a totally believable character with ease, to maximum tragi-comedic effect in a very short space of time. I hope it was an inspired one-take because it sounds like it is, rather than laboriously rehearsed.  And yes, your first thought will be ‘Kurtan’ from This Country should’ve got the part.

All the Tired Horses was commissioned for the Peaky Blinders soundtrack and released digitally as a stand alone single in spring 2022. I am still mystified and nostalgic when I listen to Dylan’s 1970 original track. I’ll wonder on his mantra and it’s potential as long as I live.

I’ve never watched Peaky Blinders – but inexplicably this version of this conundrum of a song sends shivers down my spine every time.  O ‘Neill can sound childlike and ancient within the space of a breath.

Mother Jones, Cork – born Mary Harris, was an Irish emigrant to America in the 1850’s. The legendary union organiser and activist moved mountains and changed laws for the betterment of the working class people of the United States over many decades.
In these censored and divisive times we are living in globally, she is a powerful reminder of the importance of activism and standing up to injustice .

The only other song(s) that I really know which are emotionally a-kin to this one is Lou Reeds the Kids and the whole of the second side of Berlin.  Mary lost her little lambs / the world is not always kind. 

The Bleak Midwinter (Lisa Says) I’ve loved this song since I first heard Berth Jansch’s unique recording of it. I later found it’s greater depth in learning more about the writer and poet Christina Rossetti, who published it under the title ‘A Christmas Carol’ in January 1872. Not unlike Mother Jones, Christina – a woman conflicted with her own personal griefs – put her heart and energy into those who struggled in the margins of society. When I sing this song, I think about the abundance of compassion and love we have within us even when we feel we have nothing to give. In the bleakest of circumstances, love is a beacon.

In the rush and ridiculous over-consumption of Christmas, this will stand as a quiet beacon of purity where you can take yourself away too. Has a touch of ‘Song To The Siren’ about it.

Autumn 1915 is a poem written by my favourite Irish writer James Stephens. I recorded this at home in February 2022. That time alone was precious to me.

Instead of attempting to set a melody to the words of the poem, Lisa simply recites it as spoken words over atmospheric drones. It takes a few listens but is worth persisting and helps to have the text in front of you.

This section of the poem seems to a self-fulfilling prophecy on the part of O’Neill..

For I had clung,
With what of laughter and of eagerness,
Unto the hope that I might chance to be
The maker of a music nothing less
Than those great poets of antiquity

She’s up there with them…. that is for sure.

Lisa O’Neill is a wonderful, quietly heroic artist and this is the most remarkable release of the year.

It might be that it takes you so far into the darkness of the world that you won’t want to listen to it again… or it might make you realise that we need to go there sometimes, so we can appreciate the light.

Or it might make you realise that all of the best music has a fury in its blood and is filled with the humanity that the world seems desperately short of.

12 inch vinyl edition out 20 Feb 2026

Lisa O’Neill – Official Website 

 

All words Ged Babey except artist website content in italics

Photo © Jill Furmanovsky – reproduced with permission of Rough Trade Records.