In a country currently producing the likes of Lisa O’Neill, Niamh Regan, Emma Langford, Aoife Nessa Frances, Anna Mieke and Sorcha Richardson, Laura Ampersand remains vastly underrated. Her musicality, compositional instinct and extraordinary vocal ability place her comfortably among the best of what Ireland’s flourishing generation of female songwriters is offering right now.

There is a richness to Ampersand’s work that deserves considerably more attention. There is genuine musicianship at work here, an understanding of dynamics, orchestration and emotional pacing that allows a song to grow beyond its original structure without losing its centre.

“Middle” is perhaps one of the clearest examples of that yet.

Ampersand has steadily been carving out a distinctive space within Ireland’s alternative landscape, drawing classical composition into chamber pop without allowing either side to overpower the songwriting. Following previous singles “24” and “Remember”, “Middle” feels like another step into a sound that is becoming increasingly her own.

The song begins in close quarters. Ryder’s vocal sits amid a woozy, almost suspended arrangement before the instrumentation gradually widens around her. Piano, cello, trombone, guitars and melodic bass move through the track without crowding it, while swaying drums give the whole thing the peculiar sensation of moving forward while emotionally remaining in place. It instantly reminded me of Regina Spektor and her conversational flow in her work.

“Middle” is about those periods when the familiar architecture of a life begins disappearing all at once. Relationships end, jobs change, people move away, identities that once felt solid suddenly become less certain. Ryder does not approach that experience as a neat story of reinvention. There is resistance here, grief and the very human instinct to cling to something merely because it is known.

The central idea is deceptively simple: if you cannot return to the beginning and are not ready to accept the end, perhaps the middle becomes the only place left to inhabit.

Musically, Ampersand makes that limbo tangible.

What begins with restraint steadily gathers weight, with the arrangement becoming increasingly orchestral before a sudden drop opens the track into its final movement. The closing section has the character of an off-kilter funeral march, the full band carrying the song towards something resembling acceptance without ever making the resolution too comfortable.

There are obvious reference points in the world Ampersand occupies. Listeners drawn to Fiona Apple, and as I mentioned earlier Regina Spektor, Feist or Ben Folds will recognise the combination of compositional intelligence, theatricality and lyrical introspection. Increasingly, however, those comparisons feel more useful as coordinates than definitions.

Ampersand’s background as a composer for video games and documentaries can also be heard in the way she thinks about movement and atmosphere. Instruments arrive almost like characters entering a scene. The arrangement does not merely accompany the lyric, it helps tell the story.

Producer and engineer Alex Borwick, who recorded and mixed the track between Black Mountain Studios and Sonic Recording Studios, gives those competing elements room to breathe. Pete Maher handles mastering, while multidisciplinary artist Philippa Rice provides animation for the accompanying visualiser, inspired by Caitríona Muireann’s artwork.

At its core, this track hinges on an exceptionally accomplished songwriter examining an uncomfortable part of adulthood that rarely offers itself up in clean language: the realisation that sometimes there is no dramatic beginning or ending, just a prolonged stretch between the person you were and whoever you are becoming.

Laura Ampersand allows that uncertainty to remain unresolved.

Ireland already has an extraordinary generation of women reshaping what contemporary Irish songwriting can sound like. On the evidence of “Middle”, Laura Ampersand deserves to be spoken about much more prominently among them.