It’s a given that Irish singer-songwriter Eleanor McEvoy will forever be associated with her song Only a Woman’s Heart, the truncated title of which was used for the 1992 compilation album that sold more than any other in Irish chart history. Through the years Only a Woman’s Heart has gone from albatross around McEvoy’s neck to regular contemplative call to arms for a generation or three, not least being this year’s Irish Women in Harmony’s adapted version.
McEvoy has long since embraced the song for what it is – a contemporary standard, whether you like it or not – and even refers to it here on Scarlet Angels (“A Woman’s Heart was cast adrift, scarlet angels rescued it... ”).
What she has also embraced on her 16th studio album is an accepting indifference towards expectations or perceptions, an instinctive approach that makes the songs so appealing. In other words, there might not be anything here that will give Adele sleepless nights, but McEvoy’s aim is just as straight and true.
The music styles vary from piano ballads (the gorgeous Fragile Wishes – “that music may become a friend that loves you till your sacred end, that never lets you go...”) to pop (the gritty Survival – “if this is love, then I don’t understand”), but the creative seam running through it is admirably persistent.
