Come as You Are

OK, let’s clear out the elephant in the room. Yes, Galway singer-songwriter Niamh Regan has named her second album Come as You Are and that’s going to make most people of a certain age picture scruffy boys from Seattle. While there’s plenty Nirvana-esque introspection here, it’s a very listenable, intimate collection that wears its introspection lightly. Don’t expect Irish folk music. This is commercial stuff, with slick production and something of the late-era Taylor Swift vulnerability to it. As always, it brings up that eternal question of where ‘folk music’ ends and ‘pop music’ begins. Can the music of the folk not be popular? Are they the same thing? Superficially, this is navel-gazing confessional singer-songwriting with a distinctly transatlantic flavour. Billed as ‘folk-tinged,’ that tinge is fairly slight. Regan traverses solidly pop – even catchy pop – territory, with a full band sound that brings power and energy to the album. What really sets Regan apart are the neat and memorable melodic hooks and lyrics that beautifully pluck everyday speech and place it in song, such as the lovely ‘Music doesn’t do it for you’ on the ‘Wilco-inspired’ single ‘Music’.