MARY BLACK sings Jimmy McCarthy.

It’s been 35 years since Mary Black began exploring Irish song. And almost as many since she began to perform the texts of Jimmy McCarthy, a famous Irish author-composer. The latter, who has been writing since the seventies, has cut several solo albums, and a number of his now standard songs have been sung by the greatest: Christy Moore, Mary Black, Maura O’Connell or the Corrs. Last year Jimmy called up Mary Black to ask her to record an album entirely composed of his compositions. In Mary Black sings Jimmy McCarthy, Mary gives us eleven magnificent songs, a few of which she had performed before: No Frontiers, Another Day, Katie, Bright Blue Rose, Wonder Child or As I Leave Behind Néidín in a superb duo with Jimmy himself. In addition, new songs make their appearance: There Is No Night, Love’s Last Chance, What We Came Here For, or Mystic Lipstick. Mary Black’s voice is, as usual, of an exceptional purity and there is a sort of alchemy in the way she traces her path through J. McCarthy.’s texts. She has a formidable ability to inhabit the songs and to explore the mysteries hidden within. Her respect for the words shows through in each phrase, in each inflection of the words and the notes, rendering to perfection the sensitivity contained in each of them. A new gem to add to the long list of the albums of Mary Black.

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