Since the release of Niamh Regan’s debut album Hemet on September 4 this year, she has quietly and assuredly taken her position at the top table of the Irish music scene.
Hemet has been critically acclaimed by music critics and journalists across all media and has been tipped by many as one of the contenders for Album of the Year in Ireland for 2020, and now comes her third new single from the album 'Freeze Frame'.
'Freeze Frame' is a powerful, almost orchestral song, written in the wake of Regan losing her mum in 2019. She had been due to play a concert with Matthew Berrill and the Contempo Quartet in The Druid Theatre, Galway but the concert was postponed at the time as her mum was too ill. Sometime later, after her passing, Regan wrote 'Freeze Frame' while making lesson-plans for children she had been teaching.
She says; “It’s about trying to freeze time and trying to navigate those feelings that you felt at the time - trying to make some sense of them. It’s that dreaded fear of your memories fading and trying to find ways of preserving them amidst all of the chaos of life. It’s about finding a sense of that person in the little everyday things that remind you of them.
"I was talking to Matt Berrill soon after that, and he said that we should still arrange to do the performance with the quartet. He came to my house and wrote this string arrangement for it, and we ended up doing the show in Druid. It was one of the most amazing musical experiences - hearing this obviously quite charged song - with this group of amazing musicians playing all of these exquisite lines on it.
"I suppose it was the culmination of all sorts of crazy emotions and experiences. The song is quite dramatic at times, but behind that, the sentiment is really quite simple. I hope that this track ends up meaning as much to other people as it did to me when I wrote it."
“Stunning” - Hotpress.
“A quietly stunning debut” - The Sunday Times.
“A game-changing record” - Journal of Music.
Live video of ‘Freeze Frame’ Buy Niamh Regan’s debut album Hemet on digital, CD, or vinyl via Bandcamp: https://niamhregan.bandcamp.com/album/hemet .