Burn So Bright, the debut album from Dutch-born Irish-based singer-songwriter Jane Willow (Janneke van Nijnanten) starts with a song about the Irish housing crisis – “stuck in a rental trap, wasting half my wage”. Nijnanten employs a host of Irish folk collaborators across the record; Dave Hingerty (The Frames); Fiachna Ó Braonáin (Hothouse Flowers); Steve Wickham (The Waterboys) and string arrangements from Joe Csibi (National Concert Orchestra).

Let There Be Life and Give It Time deal with pushing through difficulty, driven by acoustic guitars and piano, Nijnanten’s vivid, lyrical voice ringing through. Her soft lilt is better-suited to tracks like these, while the more upbeat tracks sound too much like what we’ve heard before, especially in this brand of Irish folk (Hands On My Hips, This Free Life).

Sweet spot

There’s a sweet spot at the end of the record, in the closing title track. “You don’t love like you should, it pains me to say goodbye,” she sings over delicate strings and gentle finger-picked acoustic guitar. It’s a song full of pain and hope, and the highlight of the record.

Jane Willow is an interesting new voice in Irish folk. The truisms and reaching vocal lines are almost excused for the moments when Nijnanten strips away the excess and reaches for something true. “I tried to capture some sort of hope in my work,” she says about the record. “Some sort of light.” In that, at least, she has succeeded.