If You Go Away

"It's taking on the whole thing of leaving,” Irish singer-songwriter Eleanor McEvoy explains the basic theme that underwrites her latest and typically diverse new album, If You Leave…, “be it from an emigrant's point of view or somebody choosing to leave. There were a couple of themes to the album; it's haunted a little bit by [the late] Brian Jones, founding member of The Rolling Stones, 'cause I was listening to a lot of that – early Stones, Beatles – before I went in to record, and I always thought that I liked Brian Jones and I realised, as I started to write about him, that I actually didn't like him at all. It's funny how writing can do that to you,” she chuckles.

The song in question is Heaven Help Us. “Of course I loved the talent, I liked his music – I thought he was very talented in that way – but I'd hated to have gone out with him, I'd hated to have been his parent or his child or his next door neighbour! I'd read a lot about him as well and kind of imagining myself going out with him,” she says.

That initial immersion in the classic pop and blues-rock of the 1960s, while she was on holiday as it happens, also explains her decision to include an otherwise unlikely yet surprisingly apt version of the Robert Johnson blues classic, Dust My Broom, on the album, itself another take on the theme of leaving. Other tracks take you from the point of view of the lover telling the significant other what their leaving will mean to them, to the ultimate revenge song, Don't Blame The Tune – taking a leaf out of the Taylor Swift school of songwriting, perhaps.

“Even the mid-relationship kind of songs are also kind of there. You know, on one hand a little bit coy and pretending to be one thing but actually are quite venomous underneath,” she adds with a laugh. “So you have that going the whole time, you know? I've been particularly interested recently in songs that have pretty little melodies that you sing 'round in your head and then suddenly you listen to the lyrics and go, 'Oh my God!' I think that can be incredibly powerful – it's like having a cuddly little teddy bear in the corner of your room and two years later you find out the teddy bear is actually a serial killer and all this time it's been in your bedroom!”

Along with newer tracks written for the album and the odd cover – including a limpid voice and piano version of The Beach Boys' God Only Knows – McEvoy also looked back at a couple of songs from her back catalogue that hadn't fitted previous albums, including the title track and Land In The Water, a co-write with Dave Rotheray from The Beautiful South. There's one song, however, that relates to the song that put McEvoy on the international map, Only A Woman's Heart. Titled Secret Of Living, it features guests Mary Coughlan, Sharon Shannon, Gemma Hayes and Hermione Hennessy.

“It was the 20th anniversary of Only A Woman's Heart last year,” she explains, “and there was supposed to be one concert and it ended up being nine nights, and I was looking 'round the stage one night at the diverse people – Mary Coughlan doing a jazz blues thing, Sharon Shannon playing an accordion, you've got singer-songwriters, so many elements – and it struck me it was a bit like The Traveling Wilburys so I thought, why don't I try and write something that's gonna fit everybody's styles. So I came up with Secret Of Living.”