Eileen was born in Saugus, a tough suburb of Boston, and brought up in a close-knit Italian-Irish American family, the youngest of five sisters and three brothers. She studied criminal law but disappointed her mom and dad by running away to England to become a rock star. Following a couple of false starts with bands, she set a solo career in motion and hasn't looked back since.

Her records and electrifying live performances have won her a dedicated following of both fans and critics. No-one sings about regret and precious time lost like Eileen Rose.

Her debut album, Shine Like It Does, released in 2000, had the critics reaching for their Rogets to come up with new ways of saying “Bloody brilliant.” The Sunday Times went with “sensational.” The Guardian plumped for “a gem,” Uncut “mesmeric” and Q “a shining debut.” Along the way, she shared dates with David Gray, Norah Jones, Radiohead, Ryan Adams, Frank Black and Beth Orton. The follow-up, Long Shot Novena, released in 2002, was even more rapturously received. The Times found it “stunning.” Uncut marveled at the “rare power, polish and perception.” Time Out thought it “a mighty powerful work” and “genuinely moving.” Time magazine rated “Good Man” as “something close to the perfect song” and Nick Hornby named it one of his favorites of the year in his book 31 Songs.

However, the pundits did struggle to figure out which box she fitted into. She uses a lot of slide guitar so she must be alt.country right? On the other hand, much of her stuff sounds like good old-fashioned rock music for grown-ups. Could she be the female Bruce Springsteen, or maybe Paul Simon? Is she a one-woman mid-period Floyd? Or is she the new Janis Joplin/Stevie Nicks/Patti Smith? Everyone had a different take on her. It was all very puzzling.

But by the time Novena hit the racks, she had already decided to go home. She had spent some years living in Essex and London and developed a life in the UK, but the events of 9/11 proved a turning point.

“It put things in perspective for me,” she says. “My parents weren't getting any younger and I felt like I needed to be spending time with them. I just felt I needed to be home.” The last track on Novena, “Big Dog,” saw her bidding Britain farewell, “I got time for one more pint, don't get me wrong, you folks are alright, and it's been international… but I'm going home,” she sang.

Eileen returned to Boston where her parents and many of her siblings still live, and set about building a career in her native country.

“When I first returned, it was like getting into the water slowly,” she says. “I had to put in a foot and then a leg. I had trouble being an American again straight away. I was still in the habit of using a lot of English phrases and people here loved to correct me and say things like, ‘You're in America now - it's hood, not bonnet.’ Eventually I got fed up. ‘What? Are you running for head of the Klan? Who cares?’”

Come The Storm was mostly written over one long winter on Martha's Vineyard. Eileen was renting an atmospheric house once owned by the artist Thomas Hart Benton, who numbered Jackson Pollock among his students. Benton and Pollock spent many nights there, drinks in hand, and the house is filled with their pictures.

“There was nobody around, it was the dead of winter, the whole place was blanketed in snow,” she says. “I ended up feeling like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. I think I went a little crazy.”

The songs reflect the intensity of that experience. They were subsequently recorded at the famous Long View Farm studios in Massachusetts, used by the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith and Stevie Wonder among many others. The album’s unique tone defies easy categorization, joining a poet's perceptive acuity to the visceral thrum of rock and roll. And the songs on Storm - about the state of the nation, leaving home, coming back home, love, regret, and maybe redemption - carry us from a close-knit Boston clan to London nightclubs and back again.