Photo credit: Molly Keane
“…Ready to pull us into a world of acutely observed vulnerabilities and introspection, the upcoming album is set to showcase a bold evolution of Regan’s sound” – EARMILK
“Niamh Regan is the real deal btw. A songwriter. a WRITER of SONGS. new stuff is somehow sounding even better. raising the bar and doing it FLAWLESSLY” – CMAT
“Niamh Regan continues to show us why she’s one of the best up-and-coming songwriters in folk music worldwide…” – The New Age Mag
Last month, critically acclaimed Irish artist Niamh Regan announced her sophomore album ‘Come As You Are’, due out May 2024 via Faction Records, along with a gentle and stirring first single Madonna.
Ahead of her upcoming UK tour in April, she shares the follow up single ‘Belly’, with an accompanying lyric video created by Julie Bryant. Ruminating on the song, Niamh says “Belly is a light-hearted song with full band production, dealing with an idea of feeling like a broken record and not being heard.” Official Lyric Video: https://youtu.be/xH_c8H3HTHU
Niamh Regan’s 2020 debut album ‘Hemet’ introduced her as an artist with a gift for crafting folk-tinged songs with a quiet, reflective intensity. The release started to make waves and achieved over 1 million streams on Spotify and led to nominations for both the RTÉ Folk Awards and the Choice Music Prize ‘Album of the Year’.
Since its release, Niamh has embarked on headline tours around Ireland, UK, Australia, and more. Pairing this with many festivals and a variety of support opportunities with artist such as CMAT, Villagers, John Grant, SOAK, Patrick Watson, Sam Amidon, Cormac Begley, Sorcha Richardson, Josh Ritter, and many more.
In between her performances, she began to write her second record in Attica Studios with producer Tommy McLaughlin. She says ‘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. 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.’
And here we are, with the upcoming release of that second album, titled ‘Come As You Are’. It’s an album full of acutely observed vulnerabilities and introspection. Its themes are the issues that many of us find loom large in the small hours: questions of self-doubt, uncertainty about your life’s direction, whether relationships are flourishing in the way you’d hoped and determining priorities.
“A lot of it is about being in your late twenties and kind of realising we’re all running out of time,” she ponders. “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.”
Niamh’s goal for the record was to achieve a richer, full live band sound, inspired by her love of Julia Jacklin, Caroline Rose, and especially Wilco. While there are moments of intimacy, the songs on ‘Come As You Are’ are far grander in scale and ambition than those on ‘Hemet’.
She has a contagious passion for performing live, having recently completed a solo tour of Ireland, Switzerland, Spain, and supporting CMAT in the EU. Niamh explains the joy of releasing new music for her is performing it to a live audience, “It’s the best feeling and I think I’ll be chasing it for the rest of my life.”
And that’s a feeling that ‘Come As You Are’ will help her tap into. It’s an album which is a confident step forward, full of songs with the spark to come alive on stage and with the immediacy to beckon newcomers into her world.
Niamh embarks in a co-headline headline tour across the UK with Christof van der Ven in April, and has announced full band shows in Ireland for November 2024, plus many more dates to be announced.
Pre-order Niamh Regan’s album ‘Come As You Are’, out May 2024 via Faction Records.
https://irishmusicmarket.com/collections/niamh-regan
‘Belly’ by Niamh Regan, is out now (Thurs 21st March 2024): https://bfan.link/NRBelly
UK TOUR DATES 2024
April 2nd – Hug & Pint, Glasgow (with Christof Van Der Ven)
April 3rd – Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh (with Christof Van Der Ven)
April 4th – Cardigan Arms, Leeds (with Christof Van Der Ven)
April 5th – The Engine Room, North Shields (with Christof Van Der Ven)
April 7th – The Folklore Rooms, Brighton (with Christof Van Der Ven)
April 8th – SJQ (Servant Jazz Quarters), London (with Christof Van Der Ven)
April 9th – Gulliver’s, Manchester (with Christof Van Der Ven)
IE TOUR DATES (FULL BAND) 2024
November 14th – Cyprus Avenue, Cork
November 15th – Liberty Hall Theatre, Dublin
Tickets on sale now: https://shor.by/zC6c
