The Waiting Game

It’s just past 9 p.m. at the Largo nightclub in the Fairfax area, and the audience is enthralled by the local debut of Irish singer-songwriter Sinead Lohan.

In “No Mermaid,” the title track from her just-released Interscope album, Lohan’s soft, almost whispered vocal captures nicely the self-affirmation of someone who races after her grandest dreams.

“I am no mermaid,” she sings, employing the familiar stereotype of the helpless female. “I am no fisherman’s slave . . . I keep my head above the waves.”

People who happened to drop by the club would probably think from the quality of the music and the response that the young singer onstage was well on her way to stardom.

But she is in many ways still at ground zero in the U.S. in a career that could take six months or more, under an optimistic scenario, to build even a modest national following.

Her U.S. debut collection is one of the most eloquent works of the year. The songs trace many of the same subjects of love and life that you find on Jewel’s album, “Pieces of You,” or most of the other folk-aligned singer-songwriter sets these days, but with more insight and a greater sense of classic craft.

The best tunes are graced with the clarity, accessibility and memorable choruses of the haunting, folk-tinged ballads that in another era you might have expected to find on an album by Judy Collins or Joan Baez.

But no matter how good the album is, her manager and executives at Interscope Records realize it may be late fall or next year before “No Mermaid” sells even the 6,500 or so copies a week that would earn it a spot on the lower rungs of the SoundScan Top 200 list--if, indeed, it catches on at all.

That’s simply the reality of the record industry in the late ‘90s. The Recording Industry Assn. of America doesn’t publish figures on the failures in the record business, but most of the hundreds of albums released each year by the major labels--not to mention the thousands released by minor labels--don’t sell enough to break into the SoundScan Top 200.

It’s never been easy to build an audience for artists with strong, independent voices. Even in the so-called golden age of singer-songwriters in the ‘60s and ‘70s, such great writers as Leonard Cohen and John Prine saw their songs become hits for others, but struggled for exposure and sales for their own albums.

It’s especially difficult to gain exposure in the conglomerate-dominated world of ‘90s pop, where the pressure for immediate, bottom-line results has put a premium among radio programmers and label executives on records that fit comfortably within the wide commercial grooves of hip-hop (the closer to hard-core rap the better), diva melodrama (Celine Dion), pop-country (Shania Twain) or pop-rock novelty (just fill in the blank).

“Whether that has to do with all the things competing for leisure time or whatever, we are living in a time of one-hit wonders, . . . a time of saturation programming for the hit single with very little attention for what is to follow,” says Interscope’s Steve Ralbovsky, summarizing the executive consensus in the industry today.

“That [works against] the kind of traditional career development in the record industry, . . . the kind where you have to have a methodical, painstaking approach that builds brick by brick, day by day, week by week.”

Though removed from the day-to-day strategy, Lohan seems to have the challenge ahead in good perspective.

“I know that there are lots of other factors involved in building a career,” Lohan, says in a gentle Irish brogue. “Timing is important, image is important, packaging is important, but that’s not anything I can control. Other people are worrying about that.

“Regardless of what happens now, I have a certain self-satisfaction in knowing that I made the record that I wanted to make, one that represents what I’m about. If things don’t work out because of timing or whatever, I won’t lose faith in my own ability.”

It was at a pub in Lohan’s native Cork, Ireland--a room probably no bigger than the Largo--that veteran Irish musician Declan Sinnon, first heard the young singer. Lohan was just in her 20s and making only her third public performance, but Sinnon sensed a promise and asked if she wanted to make a record.

Lohan, who showed a talent as a child for writing stories, started composing songs when she was around 16. Until then, she listened pretty much to standard Top 40 fare. But the more she wrote, the more she turned to writers who spoke in passionate, personal terms; particular favorites included Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Marvin Gaye and Van Morrison.

Her first album, 1995’s “Who Do You Think I Am,” was a smash in Ireland, spending more than a year on the sales chart. It was later released by Grapevine Records in England, where sales were slim but reviews were generally strong.

Q magazine, England’s leading pop publication, called the collection a “minor miracle,” noting that Lohan “chooses her words immaculately” and “delivers them with an understated strength that is ideal for evoking fragile relationships.”

Mark Spector, who manages Lohan as well as Joan Baez, first heard Lohan in late 1995 when she opened a show on Baez’s British tour.

“I was standing backstage with Joan and we found ourselves drawn to the side of the stage, which sounds like your typical talent acquisition story, but it was true,” he recalls. “We became fascinated by her over the space of 20 minutes.”

Though Spector didn’t think Lohan’s first album was right for the U.S. market, he felt “No Mermaid,” produced by Daniel Lanois collaborator Malcolm Burn, was, and he helped arrange the deal with Interscope.

The plan is to allow Lohan to build naturally rather than launch a go-for-broke campaign that could lead to a backlash. The first single, “No Mermaid,” has been sent to radio stations that specialize in the adult alternative format. Response has been encouraging, Ralbovsky says.

“We are inundated by a mass of female performers who are basically faceless and have no real identity,” says Norm Winer, who is in charge of programming for Chicago’s WXRT-FM, which is playing the title track. “The thing that excites me about Sinead Lohan is that she is an artist of substance and taste, someone with a unique voice.”

The “No Mermaid” track isn’t necessarily the most commercial one on the album, but it is the one that perhaps best introduces Lohan and defines the album’s theme of the inner struggle between doubts and desires.

“It’s really two sides of the same person talking,” says Lohan, who speaks in the same soft, thoughtful manner in which her songs unfold. “It’s the struggle we go through on all sorts of issues. . . . It’s about taking chances [rather than being] paralyzed by doubt.”

“The thing that struck me when you listen to someone like Bob Dylan or Van Morrison is that you feel someone tapping into their very soul. . . . Sometimes the feelings in the songs are hopeful, sometimes there is an injection of desperation. In the end, they are always my own and I hope they are inspiring.”

It’s easy to be pessimistic about Lohan’s chances when you think of the outstanding songwriters in the ‘90s who continue to struggle for attention.

Ron Sexsmith, who has released two albums on Interscope, is among the most acclaimed songwriters of the decade, someone who has earned the enthusiastic praise of Elvis Costello and Paul McCartney. Yet he remains largely unknown. Freedy Johnston, Matthew Ryan, Meshell Ndegeocello, PJ Harvey and, until recently, Lucinda Williams are among the scores of others in the same situation.

The good news is that patience and determination sometimes pay off.

Mike Shallett, CEO of SoundScan, points out that Atlantic Records believed enough in Jewel to work the singer-songwriter’s “Pieces of You” album for a full year before it made its first appearance on the SoundScan chart at No. 176 in February 1996. The album has since sold more than 8 million copies.

Among other artists who were painstakingly nurtured by their labels in ways that have drawn industry respect: Sarah McLachlan at Arista, Fiona Apple at the Work Group, the Dave Matthews Band at RCA, Matchbox 20 at Atlantic and the Wallflowers at Interscope.

In the fall, Interscope and Spector plan to follow “No Mermaid” with a tour (she’ll be joined by a five-piece band) and a second single that they with hope will spread Lohan’s appeal to the wider adult contemporary format, generating enough buzz by that time to get video exposure on VH1.

“By that time, hopefully the album will have sold 60,000 so if things go well,” says Ralbovsky, the artists and repertoire executive at Interscope who signed her and who has worked in the past with such acts as Soundgarden and the Beastie Boys.

“That may be when you put out your most commercial single and the rest of radio feels good enough about what’s happening with her to say, ‘Let’s get on board,’ and then you start looking at SoundScan.”

*

Robert Hilburn, The Times pop music critic, can be reached by e-mail at robert.hilburn@latimes.com