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KAREN EGAN
Very Very
No label
****

Comedienne, singer, actress and songwriter: renaissance woman Karen Egan effortlessly sheds her Nualas persona with this superb debut. She makes Sally Bowles sound almost parochial, with an eclectic repertoire that swings from a cover of Falling in Love Again (in its original German) to a languid reading of Sympathique, complete with the smokiest piano and percussion imaginable. Egan's attention to detail is forensic: her inclusion of an oft-elided verse in Mack the Knife, with its fin de siècle arrangements, sheds light on the infanticidal origins of that particular cabaret classic. Her sole duet, Salty Tears, lumbers under Cormac Keaveney's pedestrian vocals. Here's a debut that sends shivers down the nape of the neck, hinting that the past might not in fact in fact be another country - just one that ripples with subterranean mystique. www.karenegan.net