NIAMH REGAN: Just making peace with where she’s at.
NIAMH REGAN follows up her debut 2020 long player ‘Hemet’ with new album, ‘Come As You Are,’ via Faction Records.
‘Hemet’ introduced Regan as an artist with a gift for creating folk-tinged songs with a reflective intensity and led to a nomination for the RTÉ Folk Awards ‘Album of the Year,’ while ‘Come As You Are’ was recorded in Attica Studios with producer, Tommy McLaughlin.
“I arrived in Donegal to meet Tommy for the first time with a bunch of demos, half-baked ideas and feeling not ready, it was scary,” explained Regan. “But I’m so glad that I did it that way. Trusted the process and came into the studio with the intention of capturing exactly where I was with it all, and Tommy helped me build from there.
“A lot of it is about being in your late twenties and kind of realising we’re all running out of time. I’d have bouts of massive self-belief in the studio, and then in the next breath I would be like, ‘This is the worst piece of music I could have even imagined.’
“It was a rollercoaster, but through that I found self-acceptance – this is where I’m at and making peace with that. That’s what the album essentially is, just making peace with where I’m at and being realistic with myself.”
And the result is an album full of acutely observed vulnerabilities and introspection, its themes the issues many of us are visited by once darkness arrives – self-doubt, determining priorities, and doubts over the direction your life may be taking.
The aim of the record was to achieve a richer, full, live band sound, inspired by a love of Julia Jacklin, Caroline Rose, and especially Wilco – and while there are moments of intimacy, the new songs are grander in scale and ambition than those on ‘Hemet.’ – the string-assisted majesty of ‘Wave,’ subtle electro-pop beats dancing at the base of the mix in ‘Too Nice’, the dreamy Petty-esque melancholic swirl of ‘Blame’, and the standout track, ‘Music’, perfect for the expressive, elegance of her voice.
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(Photo (c) Molly Keane)