Yola

Following the unprecedented success of her song ‘Only A Woman’s Heart’ in 1992, Eleanor McEvoy could have taken to her easy chair and basked in the accruing glory and the mounting royalties, stirring only to attempt to rewrite that song every couple of years.

It is much to her credit, and our good fortune, that she’s since courageously opted for the road less travelled, and this spirit of adventure is nowhere more in evidence than in ‘Isn’t It A Little Late?’ on Yola. She serves up this track with just her own vocals and a full kit of drums plus a few words from Yola, a disappearing dialect which apparently resulted from the collision of Middle English with Irish.

That track is just one of eleven delicately crafted songs which not only explore the intricacies and disappointments of relationships, especially ‘The Rain Falls’ in which the narrator gets the big E via e-mail, but touch on other subjects too, as on ‘Last Seen October 9th’ where McEvoy draws a heart-rending picture of the forlorn search for a missing girl.

Apart from her warmly expressive, lived-in voice, Yola also brings us the subtly evocative piano of Brian Connor who gets the mood for each song with sometimes miraculous precision, but McEvoy herself must be applauded, in this age of kitchen sink productions, for having allowed her songs to fend for themselves among the generally uncluttered arrangements.

‘I Got You To See Me Through’ celebrates the mutual support that a great relationship can offer. In ‘Dreaming Of Leaving’, a writing collaboration with Lloyd Cole, she identifies with the plight of a woman trapped by domesticity, while the more upbeat ‘Leaves Me Wondering’ argues the pros and cons of an established partnership. But ‘Something So Wonderful’, a collaboration with Henry Priestman of The Christians, is a true delight, one of the most convincing gospel-tinged pop workouts to be heard in quite a while.

Yola, McEvoy’s fourth album, is a brave rejection of the predictable in favour of a more adventurous following of one woman’s heart. Yo, L.A.?