GRETCHEN Peters has been showered with deserved praise for her dark but brilliant new album Blackbirds. With its murder ballads, musings on mortality and a stunning song about war (When All You Got Is A Hammer), Blackbirds is a serious affair but it is seriously good.

Peters was born in upstate New York but has been based in Nashville for the best part of 30 years now and has become one of Music City USA’s most talented and important singer-songwriters.

She is pleased with how Blackbirds has been received, with some reviewers comparing it to Springsteen’s classic Nebraska album.

“As dark as this record is, the audiences have responded so strongly to it and I’m so grateful for that,” she says.

Peters plays four Irish dates this month – Dublin, Belfast, Rathfriland and Letterkenny – and she has high praise for Co Antrim man Ben Glover, who co-wrote three songs on Blackbirds….

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