The Canberra concert forms part of an extensive Australian tour for McEvoy, who having released her 16th album “Gimme Some Wine” to rave reviews, is now back on the road with the new album and her latest riveting single “South Anne Street”.

Eleanor’s live shows are spellbinding. She walks in a single pool of light, the stage set with an electric guitar, an acoustic guitar, violin, piano and a small amp. What follows has been enthralling audiences around the world for decades.

Eleanor McEvoy is the composer, co-performer, and producer of 'A Woman's Heart”, the title track for the best-selling Irish album in Irish history. It features regularly on screen, most recently in 2019 in the award-winning TV show “Derry Girls”.

Her song “Sophie” was described by David Smith in The Guardian as “an anthem that is touching, inspiring and consoling thousands of anorexic girls around the world” It is used internationally in treatment centres to treat patients with eating disorders.

Mostly written and recorded during lockdown - it is no surprise that the title of Eleanor McEvoy’s sixteenth album is ‘Gimme Some Wine’.

The album’s music, both nostalgic and contemporary, spans several genres – calling on older music hall, post war, 50s, 60s styles combined with fragments of Spanish, Jazz, Mexican, classical, Russian and folk music. Juxtaposed with contemporary drums, bass, or drum loops, the sound really does have something that feels both entirely new and utterly familiar.

Thematically, there’s a sense of combining opposites. Being back in Dublin but looking globally. Savouring and embracing solitude but relishing the company of friends. Reflecting on the past whilst anticipating the future. These themes are reflected throughout almost all the songs on the album.

South Anne Street  sets the scene for a song about meeting an ex at the corner of South Anne St and Grafton St. on a Tuesday afternoon and ending up in McDaid’s Pub in Dublin. It is both absolutely specific and utterly universal.

 Scarlet Angels was inspired by the recent A Woman’s Heart Orchestrated concerts with the RTE Concert Orchestra where McEvoy, Wallis Bird and Maura O’Connell all wore red on stage. A bit like the album as a whole, the song is an homage to the healing power of friends and music.  

Almost Beautiful, a co-write with (ex Beautiful South guitarist and songwriter) Dave Rotheray, describes the mental decline of a loved one. Rotheray is quoted as saying, “We went to the pub after writing that one”.

The title track Gimme Some Wine is dedicated to British artist Chris Gollon, Eleanor’s artistic collaborator who passed away suddenly in 2017.

Through this fusion of bygone and modern, established and innovative, McEvoy creates something totally fresh but with a taste of the familiar, with perhaps, a glass of red on the side.

www.eleanormcevoy.com