The Galway singer-songwriter Julie Feeney's waif-like appearance is deceptive

It's all within her long reach

Don't be deceived by her classical training or eclectic debut album, Julie Feeney is set on being a star, says Mick Heaney

Life may well imitate art, but in the case of Julie Feeney any resemblance seems purely accidental. If one were to judge the 28-year-old singer from Galway on the basis of 13 Songs, her debut album, one might expect a dreamy, happy-go-lucky waif, such is its haunting otherworldiness. The Feeney who arrives for interview, though, is an altogether more driven creature Tall, striking, intense and almost maniacally energetic, she wears her industriousness like a badge of honour. The singer has been up since four in the morning, preparing for an 8.30am corporate breakfast gig with the National Chamber Choir, the ensemble with which she earns her living.
While Feeney may have her roots in the rarified world of classical music and ostensibly work in the same singer-songwriter milieu of mellow stoners such as Damien Rice, when it comes to discussing her career, she reels off mantras as narrowly focused as those of any pop wannabe.
"There's the stereotypical thing about the musician being someone on joints and on the dole all the time," she says. "I've never been that type. I'm just so spacey in another way. I have no money, I owe loads, but somehow I manage to get the rent paid. But I wouldn't be the typical spaced musician who has no idea about business.
"Long-term, the harder the work, the luckier you get. It happens to me. Every single thing you do adds up and things come to you. If you work your arse off it will pay off."
Such an ambitious credo sounds incongruous coming from someone whose debut album is not only innovative but also seems resolutely uncommercial. "I do a lot of compartmentalising," she concedes. On the basis of 13 Songs, she does it rather well.
Feeney's album is a long way from the slacker bedsit angst of many Irish singer-songwriters, nor is it an arid modern chamber piece. Instead, her minimalist arrangements and esoteric instrumentation (no guitar, little percussion, but plenty of harmonium and xylophone) has echoes of folk, contemporary classical and avant pop à la Björk or Joanna Newsome.
It is a refreshingly original distillation of the various strands in Feeney's life: her musical technique and compositional nous, her earnest application and considerable self-assurance and her haunting vocal talent.
"It was necessary for me to make this," she says. "This was simply, exactly how I would like to express it. But I don't think you can set about doing it with a view to getting more exposure."
Yet for all her proclamations of aesthetic purity, industry still seems to define her personality. Despite the affecting music on 13 Songs, it would remain unheard if Feeney had not financed and released the album herself.
Her headstrong drive was instilled early on. One of six children from outside Athenry, Co Galway, Feeney says she owes much of her conviction to her mother, a primary school principal.
"I wasn't allowed to go to discos," she says. "But my mother is amazing: there was school, music lessons, ballet lessons. Very focused. Every evening, there was the sound of the paper in the dining room from everyone doing their homework. So it was a very good upbringing.
"I was always drawn to music, but I was also always teaching people music, from when I was small. I'd almost be hurt if people didn't get up and sing together. I'm naturally that way, though I try not to be because you get to be a control freak, like a stereotypical older sister."
By the time Feeney arrived to study music and psychology at University College Cork, however, her creative side was beginning to assert itself. She preferred what she calls the "pure indulgence" of psychoanalytic theory to the statistical analysis of her psychology degree. Although she started to compose and perform small classical pieces, she was wary of the po-faced Irish contemporary music scene, a feeling that has endured.
"To an outsider it was a bit self-indulgent and it was just a clique," she says. "I'm not really part of that contemporary scene, even though I did a masters (in music and media technology) at Trinity and I'm writing a dance opera at the moment. I don't go for it: I would never rant about being female and being a musician, but this scene is a bit male-dominated and is very close-minded."
Feeney moved to Dublin and continued her studies with characteristic vigour (as well as earning her masters degree she qualified as a primary school teacher), but felt increasingly uncertain as to what direction her life should take. It was only when she started to sing with Christchurch Cathedral choir, before getting professional music work, that she found her voice.
"You can set parameters around what you do, and I spent a few years doing that, but I actually think that is the wrong thing to do," Feeney says. "It was quite funny. In Cork I was more a composer and instrumentalist. I kind of looked down on singers a bit; I kind of felt they were bimbos. Because you were the brainy one, the mad one, that's the way you think: you're cool, you're grand and all the singers seemed like dolly birds.
"And then I just began to realise: I was songwriting, all right, but I couldn't quite place it. And I think you have to wait until it comes to you. So it was coming to Dublin, really: I grew up. If you want to be a professional musician and you're a singer, you can actually do that in Dublin. I always had the longing to sing. I'm a kind of creator and it happens that it comes out through my voice."
Although Feeney returned to her own material again, it is telling that she had no problem working with populist troupes such as Anuna, Riverdance and Lord of the Dance. "We're all sick of it now in Ireland, but I did Lord of the Dance, and the fact is you cannot discount the experience of walking out in front of 6,000 people in a stadium. You're singing live with a microphone, a backpack and an in-ear system. You have to be absolutely perfect."
For Feeney, the various disciplines of performer, singer, academic and composer only started meshing over the past couple of years. As well as recording and issuing 13 Songs and preparing for her forthcoming fringe festival show at the Spiegeltent in Dublin, she has composed scores for a short film and a dance opera.
One wonders, however, whether Feeney might not now be better nurturing her gifts rather than driving herself forward. Her belief that talent and work are enough to bring success may hold true in the meritocracy of the classical world, but it counts for little in the popular music business she has now entered, however obliquely, with 13 Songs. Having found her voice, though, Feeney is determined to make it heard.
"I think sometimes people know that they can do things well, they know they can pull them off," she says. "That might be perceived as having an ego. Whatever it's called, it is self-belief and self- knowledge. It's about knowing what you can do.
"And I know that I can make something that hasn't been made before, because of a particular, peculiar combination of experiences up until now. And being clever is handy. I'm not being bigheaded, but it is really good if you can articulate.
"It sounds strange, but I think I know something that other people don't know. I look at the world in a different way and that emanates from you. It sounds like arrogance, but I think that's what someone who creates something does -- they make something original."

13 Songs is out now; Julie Feeney plays at the Spiegeltent, Dublin, on Saturday