While Eleanor McEvoy has successfully transformed herself from folk singer ingenue to accomplished AOR songstress, it seems that something has been lost in the accompanying journey. You can empathise, forgive or condone (perhaps even tolerate) singer/ song-writerly lapses into self-introspection when the singer is accompanied only by an acoustic guitar - it lends itself to the sense of morose occasion. But when similarly-themed and constructed songs are delivered by a band whose overall sound (pleasant and consummately professional, though it is) has little or no dynamic, then it's a different matter altogether.
The problem might just lay in strategy and execution. Where McEvoy's new album, Snapshots, is eminently listenable, its high-gloss production values are completely lost in a live setting. Familiarity with the songs is only a problem, then, if you've heard the record - not an ideal situation. The real difficulty, however, lies as much in the music as the expectation of it. For a major Dublin gig (in essence the launch of the album) there was little sense of style or occasion about it. Drabness in most quarters prevailed.
Overly earnest and redolent of a gathering of bookish students, rather than a selection of likely lads and ladies out for a quietish night on the tiles, this concert was a sore disappointment.
