Maria McKee - Live At The BBC

A souvenir from days of thunder past

The McKee-penned Feargal Sharkey chart-topper A Good Heart or her own No 1 movie soundtrack ballad Show Me Heaven are hardly representative of the woman’s awesome talents. The live stage has always been her natural habitat, and the two concert performances on this disc, from 1991 and 1993, recall her at her most electrifying.

Drawing heavily from her eponymous solo album and its follow-up, You Gotta Sin To Get Saved, the sets are a splendid blend of winsome cowgirl laments and roof-rattling gospel-tinged testifying. McKee switches from the stumbling lush of Drinking In My Sunday Dress to the yearning desperation of I Can’t Make It Alone, from the Tex-Mex tenderness of My Lonely Sad Eyes to the country strum of Am I The Only One Who’s Ever Felt This Way?.

She also revisits high-water marks from her previous employment as leader of country rockers Lone Justice (I Found Love, Shelter), her magnificent voice alternately swooping and swooning along to the most kick-ass accompaniment since The Jayhawks first flew out of Minnesota. Recent albums have been middling affairs, so it’s a delight to be carried back to a time, not too long ago, when she was the true queen of the saloon gals.

Universal | tbc

Reviewed by Terry Staunton
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