Eleanor McEvoy album

NAKED MUSIC

(Moscodisc)

8/10

naked-resEleanor McEvoy calls it Naked Music, most obviously because the band is gone, replaced by her sinewy acoustic guitar with its mix of gentleness and insistence, or occasionally by electric guitar or electric piano. The deeper nakedness lies in her singing and her lyrics. Heartfelt, raw and candid, they make your skin crawl as the lilt of her Irish accent bares each word and holds it up for scrutiny.

On Wrong So Wrong she fantasises about illicit love: “I’m guessing his lips/would brush off my cheek/Before meeting my mouth, leaving me weak”. In Dreaming Of Leaving her protagonist is impaled on the possibility of turning her back on the narrow prison of domesticity. Deliver Me From What You Do is a savage indictment of religious hypocrisy, and there’s a bittersweet vision of Lubbock Woman “painting her nails red in a black neglige… out to win/but destined to lose”. The Thought Of You thrillingly caps an album containing some of McEvoy’s finest work.