Brigid Mae Power album review: a powerful and almost hypnotic experience

“I need to be able to be myself now.”

So Galway singer and visual artist Brigid Mae Power told this newspaper, recounting the sense of repression she felt here. Working with Oregon-based performer Peter Broderick has liberated her, she said, and this sparse, spectral collection is the evidence.

Chords and notes hang in space before her voice, distant, otherworldly, weaves fragments of personal memory and time into a powerful and almost hypnotic experience. Her singing is heavy with the drone and lilt of Irish tradition.

The bulk of the eight tracks employ simple piano and washes of guitar, though I Left Myself For A While and Watching the Horses step beyond the solitary contemplations of the opening It's Clearing Now and the almost hymnal Let Me Hold You Through This. A challenging, distinctive voice, but very much herself.

[ brigidmaepower.com ]