If you go down to the Electric Picnic Woods today
If you’re already trying to decide where to spend your time at Electric Picnic, then i have a little tip for you.

Search for the path into the woods on Friday at midnight where a very special act will take place in the Hazel Wood.

Returning to Ireland after spending 20 years in Los Angeles, Mairéad (no surname required) will launch her brand new album ‘Burn for Love’ with an exclusive performance in the magical settings.

She has good pedigree having toured alongside Van Morrison, Natalie Merchant, Elvis Costello and Tracy Chapman. This is a rare chance to see her on home soil and will be a nice tonic to some of the other raves happening in the trees
- Irish Daily Mail

Mairéad's Electric Picnic LP Launch
Dublin-born, Los Angeles-residing singer-songwriter, Mairead, is launching her fourth album, Burn For Love, with a midnight set on Friday in the Hazel Wood at Electric Picnic.

Mairéad has enjoyed notable success, both in the studio and touring alongside such luminaries as Van Morrision, Natalie Merchant, Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan and Tracy Chapman.

"A sweet concoction of folk dusted with Celtic mysticism" is how one New York critic described her earlier Open The Door collection, which is also well worth tracking down!
-Electric Picnic

Mairead - Rain: How Beautiful the Sound (review)
Mairead's Rain: How Beautiful the Sound starts life in verite a capella then slowly and subtly introduces atmospherics via instruments. The CD's a three-way co-pro 'twixt Mairead, Jim Goodwin, and Jimi Zhivago, a release embracing an existential persona torn between the beauty of life itself and having to live on the surface of, in the words of Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-5, a dilemma perhaps best exemplified in central lines in "Gave My Heart":
“The wheels of life, they keep on spinning / And none of us are getting any younger / In youth, we chose all of our dreams and aspirations / Our egos driven with force / But now, in our wisdom, we see the world around us is not always what we thought it would be / And, after our anger has broken to frustration, what are we gonna do? “
That sentiment, though, is not the true heart of her work; rough bittersweet salvation is, not through divinity but Man him- /herself. Mairead's musical baseline is vaguely Celtic but with many rock, prog, symphonic, and folk twists often verging on the cinematic. Any number of spiritual references flow through the 12 songs (plus prologue and epilogue), debating the various needs, necessities, and choices in the course of existence, everything centered in the inevitability of redemption through endless trials and obstacles, denouementing in the Ram Dass / zen / Buddhist admonition to "Be Here Now" or miss far too much.
Pain and passion are ineradicable from Mairead's lucid and highflown but laconic vocal work and one will find a good deal of Goldfrappe, Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Mary Fahl, Sarah McLachlan, and others in the mix. Mairead’s no heedless brightsider, so don’t expect any Bangles-y airheadedness:
“For the wisdom to come soon (I pray, I pray) / To release impending doom (I pray, I pray) / Give an answer to this time (I pray, I pray) / Release me, release me from the bonds of this sorrow “
...and so don’t desire to get out easy, that won’t happen, but do look toward the sun breaking through roiling clouds, the torrential rains to finally be providential after wrack and consternation, and for a more realistic understanding about life on Earth once we’re done with the fantasies of consensus reality, religion, and saccharine “philosophers”. We’re here, nothing can be done about that, but we have it within us to tread our way to better things.
- Verita Vampirus