Eleanor McEvoy

Eleanor McEvoy returns to oz with her latest album

by Christine Taylor

TN161 Feb 24

Internationally acclaimed Irish contemporary singer/songwriter, Eleanor McEvoy, will be back touring in Australia again for the first time since the Covid pandemic interrupted her last tour here in March of 2020.

“I am ridiculously excited to return to Australia and I don’t care if there’s a plague of locusts, a flood, involving an arc or an avalanche of cane toads, I’m finishing this one”, says Eleanor.

Gimme Some Wine is McEvoy’s 16^th album and is drawn from a broad palette, with influences from several genres within the folk-pop tradition, and yet is very much of the moment.

The album also features co-writes with legendary Irish songwriter Paul Brady and UK-based Dave Rotheray of The Beautiful South.

From her early career as a session musician in Dublin, collaborating with a multitude of artists and groups including U2, Sinead O’Connor, Midge Ure and Mary Black, McEvoy has built a solid solo career, regularly touring throughout Europe, the UK and Australia.

She got her first big break in 1992 as the composer, producer and co-performer (with Mary Black) of “A Woman’s Heart”, the title track for which is still the best-selling album in Irish history.

The song continuously makes appearances on screen and on air, more recently in 2019 in the award-winning TV show “Derry Girls”.

In early 2020, Eleanor had a great deal of success with her orchestrated version of the whole of the Woman’s Heart album playing sell out shows throughout Ireland with the RTÉ Orchestra along with Maura O’Connell, Wallis Bird and special guest, Mary Black.

This tour, fans can look forward to hearing the songs from the new album along with some old favourites.

Reviewers have raved about Gimme Some Wine.

“All told, this is McEvoy’s most consistent album in a long while, with every beat, word and note earning its keep.

“Indeed, ‘Gimme Some Wine’ is the sort of thing that gives popular music a good name.” Hot Press; reported.

“The music styles vary from piano ballads from the gorgeous ‘Fragile Wishes’ to pop and to the gritty survival of ‘If this is love then I don’t understand’, but the creative seam running through it is admirably persistent.” The Irish Times reported.

“McEvoy sounds like the sort of woman who might greet you with a bottle of red one night and a rolling pin the next”, Truck & Driver Magazine said.