Determined to prove she's no mug

It had taken Ann Scott a long time to find her feet. For years she had dabbled in music, mixing busking stints in Paris and tiny headline gigs in rural pubs with half-hearted day jobs in journalism. Even when she decided to apply herself to music more seriously, it took her two years to record her first album, Poor Horse.

By the time it came to releasing her work, in 2003, Scott realised she had run out of patience. It was not the slow pace of success that got to her, however. Rather, she had a distinct distaste for the "jumping through hoops" necessary to get her album out on a major record label. That left the Dublin-born singer-songwriter with one obvious option.

"I decided to start up my own label and release the album myself," says Scott. "I had been gigging quite a bit and I'd seen other artists around me release their own stuff, and I felt that kind of freedom would suit me best. I knew I'd be terrible, trying to go through that whole circus of impressing a record company executive.

"It just felt like the right thing to do.

I didn't want to be forced into looking a certain way or dressing a certain way. By releasing the album myself, I could make it exactly how I wanted. Normally, with a major, you wait until about your fifth album before they afford you that little luxury."

By setting up Raghouse Records, rather than hawking Poor Horse to the highest bidder, Scott may have forsaken little luxuries of her own, however - such as record company support or a reliable cashflow - but, within her modest terms, her gamble has paid off. Poor Horse earned positive reviews, and Scott gigged solidly across the country, all the while selling copies of her album from a suitcase.

Now Scott is doing it all again with her second album, We're Smiling, which comes out on Friday. And while she is still aware of the sacrifices entailed by her independent approach - she puts her three-year gap between albums down to "a distinct lack of resources" - Scott is happier having the freedom to take her time and wait until she has the album she wants to release.

"Ideally, I'd like to be a little more prolific, but it's the downtime, when you're not working, that the songs really spring from," she says. "I realise I'm supposed to have pulled my hair out for that all-important second album, but it was actually pretty easy."

Scott's laid-back attitude is as telling as it is refreshing. In a country not noted for its dearth of singer-songwriters, Scott is part of a new breed, who are just as concerned with the politics of the heart as they are with the big, bad world outside.

If the likes of Dolores O'Riordan and Sinead O'Connor paved the way for a new generation of musical Mna na hEireann, taking a significant step forward from the laments of Mary Black and her generation, Scott is among a new wave of Irish female singers who don't feel the need to raise their fists along with their voices.

"I was the sort of teenager who would ring up my local radio station and ask them to play Crazy for You by Madonna, just so I could tape it when it came on," says Scott. "I love the rush pop music can give you, and that's something I hope I never lose. You can keep exploring music, the technical side, the spiritual side, the endless variations, but it's really all about that inexplicable rush."

Certainly, Scott's music has a distinctive stamp, walking a thin line between silly love songs and something more angsty. "They're definitely people-songs, about human interaction, and even the way a person thinks when they're on their own," she says. "At its heart, though, this is an album about relationships."

Fittingly, the sound is seductive and warm, courtesy of sibling producers Karl and Dave Odlum, who have also worked on recordings by notables of the Dublin scene such as the Frames and David Kitt, as well as Gemma Hayes's recent album, The Roads Don't Love You.

And just as Hayes has a strong bond with Dave Odlum, Scott enjoys a more than professional relationship with Karl, even if she is rather coy on the matter. "I'd rather not jinx it," she says, guardedly. But this link goes some way towards explaining the strong similarity in the two women's music. So does the fact that Hayes has failed to break internationally, despite having a major label in EMI behind her, bother Scott? "It's one of those things," she reflects. "There are no guarantees in this (business). It's one thing to say you need the money and the backing, but you do need a little bit of luck, too. KT Tunstall got her break from popping up on Later with Jools Holland when someone backed out. So the best thing you can do is carve out your own way."

Certainly, Scott has carved her own idiosyncratic path so far. Growing up in Dublin, she had little real interest in music. "I would have done the usual poncing about in front of my bedroom mirror as a kid, on my brother's guitar," she says. "But it wasn't until college that I really began listening to music." Where exactly that desire to rock out came from, Scott isn't sure.

"My brother is now into bikes, my dad is into birdwatching and my mum listens to a bit of classical music every now and then.

I wish I had a mad, Little Richard uncle or something to hook it on, but I guess it came from somewhere beyond the family.

Maybe it's all Madonna's fault - Led Zeppelin and the Pixies have to take some of the blame, too, actually."

During her Erasmus study-year, away from Dublin City University - where she was studying for a BA in journalism - Scott headed with a friend to Paris. "We just busked and played in bars," she recalls.

Duly bitten by the music bug, Scott began attending the burgeoning singer-songwriter nights in Dublin's International Bar, meeting like-minded troubadours such as Hayes and Kitt. Gradually, it was inevitable that Scott would decide to follow her heart rather than her head, and become a full-time musician.

"That was something that didn't exactly have my parents jumping up and down with joy, of course," she says. "They've always been supportive, if a little bewildered by my career choice. They're just well aware of the fact that it's not an easy life being a musician. You never know what way you're going to be financially in a month's time, never mind a year - and, for artists like myself, who aren't trying to pander to any particular market, it's a long, hard labour of love."

Scott does not always make life easy for herself: the release of We're Smiling was delayed as she mulled over the title.

"It just seemed to fit the theme of duality on the album," she says. But Scott is single-minded above all. She is well aware, too, that, for many people, the term singer- songwriter conjures images of self-pitying bedsit misery. But having come so far on her own terms, Scott is sticking to her guns.

"When you say singer-songwriter, people think 'moron with an acoustic guitar'," she says. "But Thom Yorke is a singer- songwriter, as is Bono. When people write about my music, they'll often take a strand of DNA, and they'll describe it as 'three-parts Beth Orton and one-part PJHarvey', and that's just the way it is. Given that music is trend-driven, you really have to ignore what's going on out there and make the music you want to make.

"It comes down to why you want to do this, and for me it's not about lounging around in a luxury apartment in Manhattan. It's because this is something I prefer to do with my day.

"Obviously, you're always concerned about your impending bankruptcy, and you're aware that this is one of the most sexist, ageist industries that there is. But if you really love what you're doing, that in itself is almost enough. Almost."

We're Smiling is released on Friday; Ann Scott plays Whelans, Dublin, on Thursday