Late December

Not quite country, not quite soul and certainly not very rock and roll, Maria McKee’s sixth album manages to encompass all of these genres and more. The results are pretty stunning, making it a strong a collection of songs as you’re likely to hear this year.
Cuts such as the opening title track, a dramatically arranged gospel style ballad, suggest she’s been listening to Dusty Springfield’s Dusty in Memphis album (no bad thing).
Staying in a soulful groove ‘No Other Way To Love You’ sports a melody-line recalling Bowie’s ‘Golden Years’ while her voice truly shines on the acoustic ‘Power On, Little Star’, a slow-burner that builds into a dramatic, tambourine-shaking climax.
The nearest thing to a guitar-fuelled rock number ‘To Many Heroes’ manages to be both quirky and memorable – not an easy trick to pull off. Elsewhere ‘Destine’ is almost theatrical in style, while the melodrama reaches dizzy heights on ‘My First Night Without You’.
But the song that will receive the most attention (and airplay) will surely be her own take on ‘A Good Heart’, which she wrote at just 19 and which became a UK number one for ex-Undertone Feargal Sharkey. With its brassy arrangement and call-and-response backing vocals it’s more convincing than Sharkey’s glossy ‘80s version. Given a single release it could well be a hit all over again.