Niamh Regan for pop-up Waterford gig as part of tour promoting new album

One of Ireland's most exciting new singer-songwriters will be performing an intimate gig in Waterford City as part of a nationwide tour

promoting her new album.

Niamh Regan came to national and international prominence following the release of her debut album, 'Hemet', in 2020. Her current tour is to promote her latest album, 'Come As You Are', and as part of her schedule of gigs she will be stopping off at Luca Records in Waterford on Wednesday, June 5, at 8pm.

The new album is available on vinyl, CD and digital and Regan will be signing copies in-store as part of the gig - which will be free of charge to enter.

With her first album achieving over one million streams on Spotify, it led to her being nominated for both the RTÉ Folk Awards and the Choice Music Prize ‘Album of the Year’.

In between performance tours of Ireland, the UK, Australia and Europe, she began writing her second record in Attica Studios with producer, Tommy McLaughlin. It was an experience she found very fulfilling: "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."

Commenting that the album is very personal she said: "That's what the album essentially is; just making peace with where I'm at and being realistic with myself."

'Come As You Are' is an album full of acutely observed vulnerabilities and introspection. Its themes are the issues that many of us find looming large in the small hours: questions of self-doubt, uncertainty about one's life’s direction, whether relationships are flourishing in the way we hoped and determining priorities.

Regan'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’. From the rousing, string-assisted majesty of ‘Waves’, the subtle electro-pop beats of ‘Nice’ to the dreamy Petty-esque melancholic swirl of ‘Blame’, and standout track ‘Music’ the new album is an eclectic mix of material reflective of where the songwriter is at this point in her life.

With a contagious passion for performing live, having recently completed tours of Ireland, Switzerland, Spain, the UK, and supporting CMAT in the EU, Regan said the joy of releasing new music is within the opportunities of performing the material to a live audience.

“It’s the best feeling and I think I’ll be chasing it for the rest of my life," she said.

That’s a feeling that ‘Come As You Are’ will help her tap into. It’s an album indicative of 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.