“Can anyone play me another sad song?” Cara Dillon asks in ‘Where Are You’, one of five tracks here for which she shares the writing credit with her partner (musical and otherwise), pianist Sam Lakeman.
Well, there are plenty of them on this, her sophomore solo CD. It’s not so much that the actual lyrical content is particularly melancholic, but that throughout the album Dillon’s delicate, breathy soprano exudes a forlorn air of wounded idealism, of disappointment in a world that’s failed to measure up, with a catch in the vowels that suggests she could dissolve into tears on the very next note. I’m sure she’s a perfectly happy person offstage – sure, why wouldn’t she be, with the rake of awards she’s amassed at such a young age – but as a singer she could do with extending her emotional range.
Lakeman produced the album, which was recorded in the pair’s home in Somerset. The instrumental arrangements suggest that he’s no barrel of laughs either, as lushly atmospheric piano arpeggios resound to a wash of mournful cello, violin, flutes and keening uilleann pipes. And when on ‘Falling Like A Star’ (another Dillon/Lakeman original) he strips things back to a lone piano, things really get dismal: “I’m falling like a star,” Dillon sings, “I’m holding on for dear life, I’m about to reach the ground… They’ve all gone and left me alone…”
None of which is to say that this isn’t a fine CD, musically speaking. As on her self-titled debut, Dillon reveals herself to be adept at bridging the gap between traditional and contemporary material; her interpretations of songs like ‘The Gem Of The Roe’ and ‘Erin The Green’ sit easily alongside Tommy Sands’ ‘There Were Roses’, Johnny Moynihan and Terry Woods’ ‘Standing On The Shore’ and of course her and Lakeman’s compositions.
Particularly fine is the closing track, a version of ‘The Emigrant’s Farewell’. With Calum MacColl’s electric guitar churning out the power chords and backing vocalists Liam Ó Maonlai and Mary Dillon rowing in on the final chorus, you could swear that when Dillon exhorts us to “cheer up your spirits, ye lads and ye lassies,” she actually means it.