Date Published: 13-Apr-2011

She has an enchanting voice coupled with an instinctive command of a diverse array of musical instruments and a penchant in her writing for the dark and mysterious. If Laura Sheeran had been born a few hundred years ago, she almost surely would have been burned as a witch.

The multi-talented Galway musician brings her unforgettable live show home to mark the launch of her debut album, Lust of Pig and The Fresh Blood, at a gig in Kelly’s on Bridge Street in the city this Sunday night.

Laura’s acclaimed solo performances involve an impressive degree of multitasking and see her make use of a looping station, laptop, flute, accordion, ukulele, melodica and she even employs hardware tools to produce her unique sound. In fact, the only thing she probably couldn’t coax a pleasing musical note out of is Jedward.

While the idea of putting tools on stage to produce music may be something that Jedward and Laura Sheeran share in common, the similarities very definitely end there. Her angelic voice contrasts starkly with the sometimes-devilish quality of her dramatic, mysterious sound that has featured on darkly titled tracks such as I Watched a Family Die and To Kill My Lover.

This dark quality of Laura’s music belies her amiable and cheery demeanour and the paradox is one that only adds to the mystique that surrounds the enigmatic songwriter.

“Some people expect me to be some dark, depressive, cold person because my music and words can be dark but I’m a really bubbly person and I’m really up for fun. I’m not some tortured soul,” she laughs.

“But sometimes I go into the horrors and start imagining horrible things. It’s something I’ve done since I was a kid; I’d go off thinking about awful things.

“I think it’s good that I write music and I’m happy for it to verge on the dark side because it’s giving expression to something that’s in me. It’s good to express that and not be harbouring things inside.”

The 23-year old musician and composer’s talents are not confined to the musical sphere however, and she has dabbled in film, theatre, visual arts and fashion design during the course of her short career. In fact, she had planned to follow in her mother’s footsteps as an artist before she met Clodagh Simonds of Fovea Hex.

Simonds was so impressed by the young Laura’s voice that she asked the 15-year old to provide vocals for a project that she was working on. She sang on all three Fovea Hex EPs, Bloom, Huge and Allure, and became inspired to move forward with her own songwriting.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.