Details
Track Listing
1. Turning Away
2. Cut by Wire
3. Don't Say Okay
4. Bless the Road
5. Broken Wings
6. Fall at Your Feet
7. Message of Love
8. Moments
9. Speaking With the Angel
10. Big Trip to Portland
11. I Live Not Where I Love
12. Fields of Gold - (bonus track)
| Details | | Distributor: | WEA (Distributor) | | Recording Type: | Studio | | Recording Mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
Album Notes
Personnel includes: Mary Black (vocals, bodhran); Bill Shanley (acoustic, electric & hi-strung guitars, background vocals); Steve Cooney (acoustic & electric guitars, didjerido, acoustic & electric basses, percussion); Donal Lunny (guitar, acoustic & electric bouzouki, background vocals); Frank Gallagher (fiddle, viola, low whistle); Liam O Flynn (Uileann pipes, whistle); Pat Crowley (accordion, acoustic & electric pianos, Hammond organ, keyboards, background vocals); James Blennerhasset (acoustic & electric basses); Liam Bradley (drums, tambourine, background vocals); Rod Quinn (drums, percussion); Noel Bridgeman (percussion, background vocals); Alvin Sweeney, Liam O Maonlai (background vocals).
Producers: Donal Lunny, Mary Black, Steve Cooney.
Recorded at Windmill Lane and Pulse Studios, Dublin, Ireland.
If you want to hear a song sung sweetly, they say, journey to Ireland. As the champion Irish diva in the face of some stiff competition, Mary Black has held tightly onto her crown since the early '90s and, judging by this performance, seems unlikely to relinquish it for some time to come.
This is a magpie's haul of polished performances, with writing credits ranging from old favorites Steve Cooney and Noel Brazil to Sting and Neil Finn. Her voice has certainly changed, the famously clear tone of bygone years sometimes sacrificed for a harder or breathier quality, something that increases the dramatic range of often undemanding texts, and gives us a lovelorn teenager one moment and a bitter charwoman the next. The versions of "Fields of Gold" and "Fall at Your Feet" offer a different pace and slant that provide interesting comparisons to their originals. And while it's the upbeat stomps "Don't Say Okay" and "Message of Love" that stand out on first listening, the ballad "Cut By Wire" is one of her greatest achievements so far--an enigmatic tale drawing parallels between pottery and heartbreak that is poignancy itself. Angelic indeed.
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