AT first glance, it would be easy to pack Hannah Peel into the box marked "Ellie Goulding and Similar".

Fortunately for her, you don’t need to travel far into her work to realise that the Northern Irish singer-songwriter has more originality about her than that, to the point that her second album combines concept and social conscience.

Awake But… is, according to Peel, concerned with the theme of memory and driven by her desire to explore and raise awareness of dementia, and she earns credit for tackling this subject matter without allowing her music to become too cloyingly personal.

Peel’s terrain is part-Irish folk, part dream-pop and part-electronica, and while the crispness of opening tracks All That Matters and Standing On The Roof Of The World soon gives way to more challenging, eclectic material, these are songs with a sense of mission, albeit one that sprawls and loses its discipline in places.

But from the organised chaos of Foreverest to a biting version of Cars In The Garden by The Blue Nile’s Paul Buchanan (and remember, covering anything connected with The Blue Nile effectively is not the easiest job in music), Peel is all about purpose rather than platitudes. She deserves to be heard.