Groove Tube with Cian O’Connell

Without intention, Áine Tyrrell’s most recent single pre-empted a sweeping change in her life. After a decade plus living in Australia, the singer/songwriter has moved back to the west of Ireland, tracing the steps of a path she laid out in Singing Our Way Home.

Though she returned to Galway just six weeks ago, the song has been out in the world since last September.

It is an exploration of home and identity, and what those ideas mean when you can’t physically realise them. And for Irish emigrants in particular, it is a penning of invisible strings that connect continents.

Home is a complicated topic for Áine. She is the daughter of the late, great Seán Tyrrell, a legendary figure in both Galway and Clare music. As well as those counties, she spent much of her childhood in the US.

“Galway has always been home and so has Clare,” Áine says.

“Travelling around the Burren in particular for me… Bundjalung Country, which is where I was for the last ten years, has also become a home because of the people and the relationships. You get sent to places but when you live there for a while, the people and the landscape and the way of life seeps into you.”

Coming back has moved the goalposts for Áine creatively. In Galway, she is understood and appreciated in a way that isn’t quite possible on the other side of the world. The legacy of her father runs deep too, adding to the emotion of performing in the west.

“With the passing of my Dad a few years ago, coming back and playing shows here – there’s something really special,” she says.

“People know you, they know you are and your lineage. Even if they don’t know everything about me or about my dad, people have a sense of you.

“Over there, I’m an expectation of what Irish music should be. A lot of the time, that can be very stereotypical.

Here, I feel like I’m just a singer or a songwriter or a musician. It’s nice to have that freedom back again where you’re not put into a little box.

Pictured: Áine Tyrrell…back in Galway with a new single as well.