A down-to-earth shyness and modesty heighten the thoughtful intelligence behind Emer Kenny's smile. Emer has a lot to feel happy about just now; her recent debut album, self-titled Emer Kenny, is reeling in critical acclaim, and she and John Murphy - hubbie and musical partner - are hard at work on album no. 2.
"Ooh, yeah," says Emer, when I ask is she enjoying her work. "Although sometimes you feckin' hate it. But it is good; we work from home, so it's very much part of our lifestyle."
As well as singing, Emer plays keyboards, bodhran and harp on the album, which she and John Murphy penned together. Emer's voice - haunting and ethereal - partakes of that ever-evolving, powerfully emotional and naturally mystical Irish female vocalist tradition made so popular worldwide by the likes of Enya and Sinead O'Connor.
Having played music since she was a kid, Emer went on to study music in college. Did she enjoy it?
"Well, the music end of it is good, but it's just that the work end of it is terrible, and it's a very blinkered environment really," she says. "We all went into first year in college, and you're all pretty good to get in in the first place, and by the end of it most of us had given up and got fed up and decided to do totally different things, which isn't really very healthy. We all went in loving music and we all came out thinking, Jesus, this is dreadful."
Was it the kind of situation that killed creativity?
"Absolutely! I mean when I came out, I could hardly play at all. It's just that you get so bloody freaked out, and exams don't suit my personality at all. I know to a certain extent you're being judged all the time, but to go in and try and play with three people in a room staring at you and being really uncommunicative back just does me in really. It probably does most people in. I gave up for two years after that, and then I started getting back into playing the Irish harp again and writing and singing."
Modern Irish harp played against a background of pop, dance and trad-influenced instrumentals and sequencing provides a brilliant counterpoint to Emer's soft floating voice, which wraps itself around traditional songs like 'Amhran na Leabhar - Song of the Books', about the sinking of a ship carrying books to the Irish hedge-schools - as well as her own original material.
"John might come up with a riff on the frequencer," says Emer, describing their creative process, "or we'll do a chord sequence on the keyboard and work off that, but still a lot of the time it's from the harp - that's what I know best really. I've been playing it for donkey's years."
Does she find it tough working so closely with her husband, John?
"Sometimes it's great and sometimes it's awful, but I think that's just working on music with anybody. It's great because we're very honest the way we work together. If you hate it or love it or if you have a passion about it, you'll go with the person who has the strongest feeling. It's good, but the other thing about it is that we're also always working, so it tends to take over your life, especially when you're working from home."
Do they feel like they have to get away from music sometimes, just to clear their heads?
"Well we very rarely do," laughs Emer, "that's probably why we're going mad! It becomes very all-consuming."
Emer Kenny's album has been selling well in the States since last autumn. Are she and John ever tempted to move to the US, where the kind of music they produce has such a huge market?
"Yeah we could move, but to be honest at the moment I'd rather live here, because you're more or less on the same wavelength as everybody else. You can curse, and you can drink here as well. We found that you were OK to have one bottle of beer or one glass of wine but if you go over that it's like wooooohhhh! It's almost like prohibition. You can get smashed out of your head on drugs which is perfectly OK, but a couple of beers and it's tut tut tut . . ."
Like her music, Emer's opinions reflect experiences that many of us understand. n
* Emer Kenny is released on Triloka Records and marketed by Polygram.