An award-winning jazz singer, who combines teaching with live performances and recording, Tipperary native Edel Meade has been active for the past decade in a variety of musical guises.

On her long-awaited debut, Meade blends originals with her own songs to impressive effect. A lushly-produced affair, it’s both fresh-sounding and comfortingly familiar. Irving Berlin’s ubiquitous dancefloor standard ‘Cheek to Cheek’, for example, is given an upbeat treatment with busy, bossa-nova rhythms.

Of Meade’s own compositions, ‘Love Lost’ stands out; a classic late-night torch song that could grace an Ella or Dinah album. Meanwhile, ‘I Tried To Take His Life’ – another original – recalls the atmosphere and feel of Dusty Springfield’s Burt Bacharach cover, ‘The Look Of Love’. Smooth, sultry and sexy, Meade’s voice oozes sensuality, while the piano and trumpet add sophistication.