Brigid Mae Power has spent much of her life avoiding categorisation, and her music is difficult to define too. The London-born Galwegian’s status as an “outsider” has been present from a young age. She recalls performing an early composition in front of her family. “They laughed, probably because it was cute,” she recalls, smiling. “But I took it that they were laughing at me. I’m really stubborn, so I thought, ‘Right, well I’m not going to do it any more.’ I didn’t start writing, really, until I was 21.”
Power may have inadvertently cultivated an enigmatic persona, but in person she is a thoughtful and honest conversationalist, softly spoken but with plenty to say. Her intoxicating, affecting music has won critical acclaim in the Irish and UK music press; the fiercely personal folk songs revealing her in subtle ways. As with her 2016 debut, her forthcoming second album, The Two Worlds, is a record to sink into, crackling with atmosphere and defiantly roaring into life like a coal fire on a bleak winter’s evening.
We meet in the Ard Bia cafe beside Galway’s famous Spanish Arch, the river Corrib thundering past as we both marvel that, for once, it’s not raining. Power — whose Waterford-born father and London-Irish mother relocated here from London when she was 12 — is still not used to the west of Ireland dampness.
“The weather just absolutely kills me,” she says, frowning as she stirs her coffee. “I was in Dublin the other day and it was raining, and I noticed no one was wearing waterproof pants. So many people wear them here, because it rains so much.”
Apart from the weather, school was an unhappy time, and she recalls a palpable sense of displacement. “In a way, it was so freeing to come here — because as a teenager I could go wherever I wanted,” she says. “But over there I always felt like I could speak my mind in class; say, ‘Well, I don’t agree with that,’ or whatever. When I came here, I remember saying that to the nuns and there was this deathly silence,” she laughs. “I grew up in a London-Irish bubble, so I was definitely Irish there, but when I came back here, suddenly I was English.”
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Nevertheless, the 31-year-old has found a niche in her adopted city. Straddling the boundaries between folk and lo-fi indie, her music exudes that indefinable quality that simply sounds good late at night. “I don’t know what I sound like,” she shrugs, noting that even though she enjoyed playing the button accordion from a young age, “contemporary trad” is not accurate. “Folk is not quite right, either.”
At 18 Power left Galway for a stint in New York, keen to follow in the footsteps of her musical and literary heroes. While there, she entered an abusive relationship that she documented in a harrowing blog post last November. The emotional, psychological and physical scars remain, although sharing her story has been cathartic.
“It took me a while to write it,” she reveals, “and some days I’d kind of feel a bit panicked. It was a huge decision to make, but I’m so glad I did; I think there had been something haunting me without me even knowing it. Even though I’d intellectually processed everything that had happened, writing that brought a different level of feeling OK about it. I felt like a burden lifted; a little anxiety just went away. Someone got in touch to tell me they’d been a victim of the same person, so it was amazing we were able to connect. So even though it’s tricky and hard, I don’t mind contributing to breaking that taboo.”
Upon her return to Galway, Power began writing songs and found many of them were “sad, sort of depressive songs”. “No, not depressive,” she corrects herself, “but I went through that big trauma, so I think my pain was coming out.”
Eventually, she got around to putting some of her material on tape, self-recording her first informal collection, I Told You The Truth (available on Bandcamp), in the nearby St Nicholas of Myra church, “between cups of tea and hiding from the vicar”.
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“I went in there because I’m not technologically minded whatsoever,” she says. “I wanted reverb, so I thought that was the best way to do it.”
Her career took another turn when she met the American musician Peter Broderick at a gig in Cork, and he invited her to open for him on tour. Later, she travelled to Portland, Oregon, to record what would become her 2016 debut, “and I guess we just kind of hit it off”, she smiles. The pair married in 2016, and now live in nearby Barna with her seven-year-old son from a previous relationship.
“That tour was kind of a breakthrough for me,” she agrees. “Even though the audiences weren’t right for me — because Peter’s got such a varied repertoire that sometimes he has people into all different types. The experience of doing it was like, ‘Oh, this is possible. People make money from this, so I wanna do it now.’”
The Two Worlds, again recorded with Broderick as producer but this time at an analogue studio in Co Down, is more defiant than its predecessor. I’m Grateful is a reflection on happiness. Don’t Shut Me Up (Politely) is a one-woman protest song, with lyrics such as: “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s your dealing with everything underhand.”
Her lyrics are entwined with the personal — she speaks passionately about women’s rights and her experiences with the family court system — and the political.
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“I recorded that song for the first album out in Oregon, but it just didn’t work because the atmosphere wasn’t right — it was just so sunny there, and I was so happy. So we went to the north and that was the perfect climate for it,” she jokes. “The second album is almost like there’s a low grey sky, which I was looking at every day, and that affected my mood and what I was writing about. Whereas if the sky is big and open and limitless, you’re kind of like, ‘Ahh!’ I think that was the difference.”
With growing attention from audiences in Ireland and abroad, she is realistic about her career development and ambitions. “I’m not too bothered about fitting into a scene; I don’t want to be nominated for awards,” she says. “I’m more interested in doing good quality stuff, and I think that pays off in the end. But I am ambitious, and that comes out pretty quickly when someone says to me, ‘Why don’t you do a course in something?’” she laughs. “So I guess I do have ambitions, but I’m not interested in being popular.”
As for the advice she’d offer to the 12-year-old kid who has arrived in Galway from London, feeling a little lost? She smiles, taking time to find the right words. “I’d tell her, ‘Don’t worry. Trust your gut instinct. They’re mad, not you,’” she says with a smirk.
“No, maybe not. I’d just reassure myself there are other people out there on the same page, even in Ireland. So don’t worry — you’ll find your people eventually.”
The Two Worlds is released on Tompkins Square on Feb 9; Brigid Mae Power plays Bello Bar, Dublin, on March 29