LIKE fellow Irish singer-songwriter Damien Rice, on whose O album she first made her name, Lisa Hannigan is in no hurry to release records.

There was her Mercury-nominated debut Sea Sew in 2008, Passenger in 2011, and now a longer wait for At Swim, an album with a title to irritate grammarians but a beguiling beauty to draw you in like a siren to the rocks, if a watery image may be indulged.

Why the delay? A new relationship that had Hannigan hithering and thithering between London and Dublin and a film debut as a mermaid in Song Of The Sea, plus soundtrack work for Fargo and Gravity.

Out of the ether came an email from The National's Aaron Dessner, suggesting they should work together. They met up in Denmark, as you do, then recorded together in Hudson, New York, and the result is a set of breathtaking songs of homesickness, isolation and love, no longer lost at sea.

Lisa Hannigan plays Leeds Brudenell Social Club on October 22