Ellie O’Neill – Time of Fallow – Album Review
by Killian Laher

One album that turned our heads recently is the debut by Co Meath singer Ellie O’Neill, who lately supported John Francis Flynn and Adrianne Lenker.  It’s an intimate, unhurried piece of work, at times so sparse and pared back you nearly hold your breath while listening to it.

It opens with the simple finger picking of Silent Water and O’Neill’s languid vocal draped over some deceptively simple-sounding guitar picking.  The production is notable; I believe it was self-produced with a little assistance from Sean Carpio. You can pick up the fret changes and almost hear every sinew within the song, before a rhythm section comes in halfway through the track.  Anna with the Silver Arrow creates a similar atmosphere, but here the guitar is strummed rather than picked.

The piano ballad Half Immune is a change in tack, a bit like early Joni Mitchell crossed with Jose Gonzalez, a trick she repeats later on, albeit gloomier, on Seán Song.  The wistful Sister of the Sea is a little more fleshed out, Ellie O’Neill’s guitar pattern joined by a gentle drumbeat and a subtle bassline. It’s absolutely gorgeous.  Bohemia’s moodiness is interrupted by some sharp percussion tricks that sound like the snapping and slamming of a machine.  It’s the small touches like this that stop the album from getting repetitive.

The moody Little Sister is all about desire when she sings “wanna feel your skin, your hair, your nails, your tongue, your throat”; you really believe it.  The references are so detailed (“let Auburn Street fill with milky stars and baby teeth”) that it has to refer to something specific.  Towards the end of this excellent debut album, Witness has almost impossibly gorgeous guitar picking accompanying O’Neill’s bitter tale of a lost relationship, with a highly evocative chorus: “one part out west at thе foot of a mountain, one part in a Dublin tenement building, one part at the mouth of the River Shannon”.  Possibly the most fleshed-out track, Seabird rounds the album off, with the merest hint of Joni Mitchell, but it, like the other tracks here, stands apart as very much their own thing.

Overwhelmingly not a background album, it’s one to sit and listen, motionless if you can and immerse yourself in Ellie O’Neill’s wonderful songs.  It’s out for a little while, but you can still find copies here: https://ellieoneill.bandcamp.com/album/time-of-fallow

Half Immune