Something to smile about

She started off busking in Paris, but it was back in Dublin that Ann Scott honed her songwriting, she tells Tony Clayton-Lea

My God, but here's something out of the blue, out of the traps and ready to go. Thirty-ish musician and occasional freelance journalist Ann Scott has released her new album, We're Smiling, and if it isn't in the year-end "Best Of" lists we'll be forced to eat humble pie.

Hers isn't a name that is readily recognisable, but the music - a slow burning mixture of narcotic rhythms and gently rolled-out lyrics - is the kind of thing we'll be hearing a lot of on any radio station that bothers to actually listen to it.

"It's not done on the criteria of having to be playlisted on radio stations," says Scott, "although I definitely think it's play-listable. It's just that that wasn't one of the criteria from the outset. If it ends up on the radio all the better, but it's not the aim or the objective."

Scott isn't in a hurry to stake her claim as one of the best new Irish female songwriters; she's of the age where impetuosity has perhaps given way to a new kind of operational methodology. She doesn't seem the type of songwriter to adopt a stereotypical getting-it-together-man vibe that has nobbled some highly talented people. A sense of discipline, too, informs her work and her character, despite her proclaimed frivolous approach to her art.

"What I meant is that I suppose I'm not very restrained when I'm writing songs - I'll let anything in there and a lot out as well. I'm sure other people might think some parts are a bit cringey, but I think it all has to come out - as long as it's not waffle. If it means something to you, then you have to make sure you're not aware of what other people are thinking about it, and just trust your instincts. I always go with my instincts; songwriting is something you have to try not to rationalise."

Does it all come out, though? All the personal stuff that someone of Scott's age has accrued over the years could account (possibly - I didn't dare ask) for a few soap operas and some scabrous dish-the-dirt songs. Does she, like some songwriters, self-edit as she goes along, carefully sifting out potentially damaging autobiographical references that might come back to haunt her when she's as big as PJ Harvey? Or does she just go with the flow, publish and be damned?

"Whatever way it comes out, really," she blithely answers. "I get a bit bored with my own personal stuff, so some songs are about other people's situations, or it's a mood thing. I don't necessarily feel the need to script everything that happens in my own life, though. It's possible it comes out in other areas, be they more abstract or impressionistic. I do prefer things that have a bit of an angle or a slant, but it's difficult to pin down. All I know is that I write loads of stuff and I scrap most of it, but if bits and pieces come back again, bits of lyrics, then I might keep them."

Scott has been floating around the Irish singer-songwriter scene for more than several years. She graduated from DCU some time back with a degree in journalism, but quickly grew to realise that it wasn't all she had hoped it would be.

"I thought it would be more creative," she admits, "whereas depending on what part of journalism you go into, you have to be quite anal about things. Also, I don't think I would have made the grade for the whistleblower type of writers I admire. I loved the colour writing side of things, but when it came to going out to do freelancing I found it difficult, almost as hard as the slog into music."

Her entry into music came about while she and a college friend were in Paris as part of their journalism course. Busking paid the rent ("we weren't doing a lot of hard work, that's for sure") and from there the music took hold.

"Initially, I thought the songs I wrote sounded stupid, but then I went to the International Bar in Dublin, where everyone was a singer-songwriter and bared their souls with their own songs. In Paris, we played cover versions, but back in Ireland it was all about your own material. It took me a while to get into the swing of it, but once you got the knack it was fine."

A knack to songwriting? Isn't it something that comes from above, that is almost a spiritual thing and that moves in mysterious ways?

"There's a lot of myth about songwriting, but it's like any craft - it takes time to come up with good material. A lot of people say they have difficulty doing it well, but that's all part of becoming able to do it."

According to Scott, songwriting is a disciplined art form. "But it's different for everyone. You need an incentive to finish a song but not always to start one. I don't know how other people work, but I would have around five or six songs finished very month. You tend to do it almost involuntarily, because once you're in the mode it becomes a thing you do. Songwriting is almost like a de-stress thing - you're getting something out of your system that needs to come out. The creative side is the joyous part. The doing of it is difficult - it's easy to go to a gig and see someone on stage and think you can do that, too."

Except in Scott's case, she has done just that. Her 2004 debut, Poor Horse, broke the ice, but it's with We're Smiling that she has melted hearts and minds. Her music is an assured intersection of strange and accessible; she's an independent artist flogging an independently released new record, the aim of which is to - well, what exactly are the ambitions she has for her music?

"To create something authentic from the set of ideas I have in my head, and to strive to do something that's good. There are a lot of chancers out there, I think, and my aim is to do something that's more genuine."

We're Smiling is on release