Ave Maria

Maria Doyle Kennedy comes to this interview apologising for her authentic ’80s hairdo, fresh off the set of a television drama based around the Hepatitis C scandal. The irony is that she wouldn’t have been seen dead sporting such a do even in the height of that decade. One of the few performers to emerge from The Commitments episode with dignity intact, she has of course proved herself not just as a singer with acts like the Black Velvet Band and Hothouse Flowers, but also as a respected actress on stage and in films like Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s Nothing Personal and John Boorman’s The General. She’s here now to promote her debut album Charm, out now on her own Mermaid label. Factor in three sons and a husband, and you wonder at the woman’s energy.

Charm will surprise a few people, although anyone who saw the Black Velvets’ later tours would’ve recognised a woman fast outgrowing her role as vocal foil. The lead-off single ‘Without U’ is a confident hybrid of the r&b and soul flavours currently in vogue, leavened by an acoustic feel kept on the tight side of ramshackle by collaborators such as her husband Kieran Kennedy and also drummer Dave Clarke. Childhood airs inform a few of the tunes, particularly the loaded imagery of fables and fairy tales.

“The main thing about ‘Snow White’ and ‘Bitter Sweet’ is, I guess, the images that are projected from fairy tales onto children,” Maria says, “especially young girls. They’re about being patient, being submissive, waiting for your destiny to come along in the shape of some huge magical force that is a man, your life-mate, and therein lies your role, to wait for that. And that pisses me off so much, that whole notion of be silent, be faithful and loyal and wait and it will come to you, rather than know what you desire and go for it. I have three sons, but if I had a daughter I would really like it if her first word was ‘No’.”

Vocal prowess apart, the new album also showcases MDK’s hitherto hidden skill with a lyric, evident on ‘Helena’, featuring Ursula Burns on harp (“isn’t she fantastic - she’s a little fairy from Belfast”). It’s a song that stitches Irish ballad craft to the Spanish fatalism of Lorca’s Blood Wedding using the premise of a teenage pregnancy.

“It took a while that one,” she says. “It’s funny. Sometimes I listen to it and it’s as if its condemning the daughter for her action, but what I was trying to do was bring the people together, the mother, the father and the daughter. I love that song. I thought a lot about all the times you hear about little babies being born, like recently where the kids found a baby in a bag that was a goalpost. (And) there’s the girl who had the baby in the grotto, Ann Lovett, it just broke my heart, I thought, ‘Was there no way that the gap could’ve been bridged?’”

Charm also exhibits an impressive command of atmospheres. ‘Safe From Harm’, co-written with former Interference singer Fergus O’ Farrell, marries the shale-strewn tones of Patti’s Smith’s ‘Wave’ (“I’d like to do laundry with her someday”) to the quasi classical shades of messrs Glass or Nyman, resulting in a kind of ghost gospel.

“A lot of the stuff on the album is about safety,” Maria suggests, “this place where you feel utterly safe, where it’s just all okay. My mother had a lucky charm bracelet, it was very popular in the ’70s, little gold discs with our names on it, my sister and my brother and I, and it made a sound on her arm that made me go, ‘Oh Mammy’s here’ and it felt good. It’s all about that sense of safety and comfort and unconditional love, the need to give it and receive it.”

Charm is out now on Mermaid Records, distributed by RMG. Maria Doyle Kennedy will be touring Ireland from late October. www.mariadoylekennedy.com