Album Review: Niamh Regan, Come As You Are

Galwegian songstress Niamh Regan rubber stamps her reputation as one of the most formidable forces in the Irish indie-folk scene with her sophomore album, a pristine record which deals with faltering relationships, self-doubt, and love with exactitude and fearless candour.

Debut LP Hemet showcased her raw songwriting talents over a guitar and piano doused sonic landscape. The instrumentation is elevated this time around, with a full band conjuring a smorgasbord of world-class arrangements, matched only by Regan’s tuneful self-analysis and ability to broaden the particular.

The highlights are plentiful, not least the driving ‘Music’. This tune would make an armchair-bound geriatric do the twist, with a Wilco-esque guitar solo and a chorus that sounds as if it’s been directly pipelined from the firmament. ‘Long haul’ evokes Julia Jacklin through its unflinching dissection of the singer’s romantic uncertainty – a theme permeating throughout the ten-or-so tracks. The album reaches its emotional zenith on ‘Waves’, to the backing of one the record's most encompassing, string-swathed compositions. Things get experimental too. Rubbery, psychedelic bass loops meet The Angelus on ‘Nice’, which also feels like an old-school Calvin Harris banger through its ghostly piano.

Thematically, Come As You Are amounts to a euphonic journey through the intricacies of doomed love. On ‘Belly’ it’s someone else’s fault, on ‘Blame’ it’s her own, before Reagan appears to reach some form of acceptance by the time the dust settles on ‘Mortgage’.

This is one worth leaving on ‘til the needle scratches the centre label…

OUT 31 MAY