Sinéad Lohan in-store appearance,
Bristol, 18 August 1998

Sinéad Lohan at HMV, Bristol. Picture: Susan Cane

The HMV store in Broadmead, Bristol, has never struck me as the ideal venue for live music of any description. Not only is there no proper space for musicians or for an audience, but the shop's main aim will always be (and understandably so, I suppose) to sell as many CDs and tapes as possible. Nevertheless, when Irish songwriter Sinéad Lohan made a short in-store appearance there, to promote her newly-released second album "No Mermaid", I could think of no better place to spend my lunch break.

My previous experience of musicians appearing in shops, was limited to one occasion several years ago, when I happened to walk into a local branch of Our Price. I suddenly found in the midst of hordes of teenage girls, all of whom seemed to be pushing to get towards the front of an autograph queue. I don't know who they were there to see, but I decided to turn around and walk out again . . .

Luckily for me, things weren't quite the same this time. The electrical equipment had been arranged as well as could be expected in the circumstances, with two microphones standing in a gap between the CD racks. In an aisle behind them, somebody was organising the sound equipment. Anybody who wanted to listen had to stand in the two aisles in the front half of the shop, surrounded by CDs and t-shirts. Not the best listening space, but definitely not the best place to play, either!

Of course at an event like this, its impossible to establish much about the audience - I don't know how many people had come specifically to hear the music and how many had just been walking through/past the shop and then decided to stop and listen. There was a reasonably big crowd, though - and from the number of people who were holding Sinéad Lohan CDs before she had sung a note, I assume that several of them were already fans.

Sinéad is in her twenties and for the past few years she has been gradually making a name for herself outside Ireland. I first heard her live on the A Woman's Heart tour at the beginning of 1995, around the time of the release of her first album "Who Do You Think I Am". On that occasion she only got to sing one song during Mary Black's set, but it was enough to introduce the audience to a new voice.

Now there are still a lot of people who have yet to hear her for the first time, but she has already met with the approval of none other than Joan Baez, who has recorded two of her songs. "Who Do You Think I Am" and "No Mermaid" were included on Joan's 1997 release, "Gone From Danger". None of this was mentioned during the HMV appearance, though. In fact Sinéad didn't have the chance to say very much at all, using the short time she had available to just get on with the songs.

She began just after 1pm, when she walked downstairs from the Singles department and took her place between the shelves. Sinéad thanked everybody for coming, then launched immediately into "Disillusioned". She continued with a few more songs from the new album, sometimes playing guitar too. The second microphone was for Karl Breen, who also played guitar. There was a short introduction to "Diving To Be Deeper" (one of my favourite songs on the album), but only to tell us that this was a song she'd written ages ago.

"No Mermaid", was next with lines like:
"But I am no mermaid,
I am no mermaid
and I am no fisherman's slave.
I am no mermaid,
I am no mermaid,
I keep my head above the waves."

"Loose Ends" followed, before a final plug for the album led into the final song, "Whatever It Takes". These acoustic versions were quite a contrast to the recorded versions, as the whole album has much more of a 'pop' feel than the folky "Who Do You Think I Am". For that reason, I wasn't really expecting to like "No Mermaid", and I was surprised to find that it's my favourite of the two. On the whole I think it just comes down to liking the new songs better.

It was all over too soon; but it was free, so I really can't complain about that. It looked like HMV had sold enough copies of "No Mermaid" to keep them fairly happy, too. All in all, I enjoyed it a lot more than I would have enjoyed a lunch time spent in the staff restaurant!

Susan Cane