Niamh Regan Live at Levis Corner House Review: Authentic Emotions Are Universal
Irish singer songwriter brings magic, emotions and beauty to her gig in West Cork
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There’s a line about being in the room where it happened. When the room is the size of a small shop and what happens is a string of beautiful melodies and authentic emotions, then the result is magic. Niamh Regan, an Irish singer songwriter, provided the music, melodies and emotion and the front bar at Levis Corner House in Ballydehob was the room where it happened.
Levis Corner House is a pub in the heart of Ballydehob village that has been in the same family for over 100 years. The road that runs past it continues out to Mizen Head at the far Western tip of Cork and from there your next stop is Newfoundland. The tiny front room space has a bar on one side and an old grocery shop counter facing it no more than 5 metres or 15 feet away. The decor is a mix of random original grocery store left overs and posters for live music gigs - it is a style that other venues pay thousands to recreate. The shop counter is well known in the area as the space where performers play from and last Saturday Niamh Regan sold out her planned 8:30pm show so offered an additional 5:30pm. This meant we had the chance to enjoy a live gig and a drink and still be home for tea at 7:00pm! At the 8:30pm show it turns out that Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds was in the room and joined in on piano!
Niamh’s music is mellow, melodic and folk inspired. On her acoustic songs you can hear a creative folk inspired line from Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon. With the electric guitar Niamh travels into Stevie Nicks and Florence territory with definite (for this listener) overlays of PJ Harvey. There are also piano based songs which require the singer to step out from behind the counter, shift a couple of audience members over and sit down at the pub upright. These songs maintain the same lyrical honesty as the guitar compositions and combine this truth with chords that Elton John would be proud of playing - especially on “Take It Easy On The Road.” Niamh’s influences underpin her set without her music sounding derivative.
One of the beauties of seeing an artist that is new to you is where they can lead you. When I read more about Niamh and her story there were references to folk singer Karen Dalton who I had not previously listened to. Dalton passed away in 1993 aged 55 after a life lived on the edge of depression, addiction and poverty. Despite this she made melodic and heart rending music and you hear this echoing through Niamh Regan’s work.
Regan’s lyrics are poems (and sometimes painful laments) to lost or missed opportunities: “You were in a bad way and I didn’t notice” or expressions of vulnerability like “ Something so inviting to a heart that was trying” from Freezeframe which makes you catch your breath. These emotional reactions were intensified by the closeness of the singer to the audience, the lack of anywhere to hide for her or for us. She could fix each person present in the eye and share her story directly to their heart.
All this emotional honesty and vulnerability might make you think that this was an evening that would set you to gazing deep into your pint of Beamish and popping next door to the garage to buy a pack of Marlboro Lights. However, Regan is very good company and surprisingly light hearted with a good line in self-deprecation. Her new single, Madonna, starts with the line ‘A Madonna whore complex is it a thing?” and she introduces it by saying “Surprisingly this is not a summer bop !” The song goes on to examine how behaviour in relationships can be twisted by expectations of what female partners should be and the emotional violence that ensues. The song contains one of the most cutting lines I have heard in a song “The perfume you got for me and your mom”
The combination and juxtaposition of sunny disposition with insightful and sometimes painful lyrics is like the person that we knew who never appeared depressed. I had a colleague who was outwardly very successful at her corporate job, and incredibly clever. She had a wonderful family and lived in a beautiful big house in the good part of her town. We worked on several successful projects together and had spoken lots on train and car journeys. One Thursday afternoon we had a meeting scheduled in which we were supposed to go over spreadsheets, presentation decks and whatever else corporate bullshit we did. When I arrived, my colleague was sat in the meeting room with the lights off. The room was dim, with just the fading grey outside light seeping in. Almost instantly, she started crying, then apologised for crying and then cried again. She had reached her limit with everything. She told me that she had gone to the right college, had the right boyfriends, got the right job, married the right guy and bought the right house. She had a boy and a girl (the right kids) who went to the right schools and they all went on the right family holidays. But “I fucking hate it all, because who the fuck am I?” We spoke for the hour that we had the meeting room and the episode was never mentioned again. Outwardly, a successful, clever and attractive woman who is hiding and storing pain and frustration. A sunny disposition hiding darkness like so many of us because who wants to hear about our problems? So when Regan sings that line “You were in a bad way and I didn’t notice” it cuts through. The graciousness and joking in between songs represents our own lives - we are gracious, we are happy, we don’t go there - until we are forced. Niamh Regan is able to take us there and bring us safely back to ourselves again all within a three minute song, sung from behind the shop counter of a pub in West Cork. She is a talented writer and performer and a sharp observer of the human condition and her new album Madonna is out this May. She is an artist with something to say and deserves to be heard.
Thank you for reading the JasonWard Creative Substack. This is a reader supported publication so please consider taking out a free or paid subscription. You will receive access to over 100 articles, reviews, interviews, podcasts and playlists! Thank You
Niamh Regan is currently touring (link below) and you should jump at the chance of being in the room where Niamh Regan happens!
Find out more about Niamh Regan and download her music here:
You can check out upcoming gigs and events at Levis Corner House here:
