Eleanor McEvoy plays solo show at the Crane to celebrate new album

Eleanor McEvoy plays a solo show in The Crane Bar on Thursday, October 28. The Dublin born singer is embarking on an Irish tour to celebrate the release of her eighth album, I’d Rather Go Blonde.

The single from Eleanor’s latest album is Look Like Me, a song that reflects on the obsession with image in the music business.

“The immediate inspiration was about looking at women who all looked the same, the tan – and they were all wearing the same straight blow-dried hair!” she says. “It occurred to me that a lot of them would’ve spent thousands of pounds on the way they look.”It’s a song that also draws on her own experience in the image-centred industry.

“For a long time I tried to fit in with that,” Eleanor reflects. “Then a few years ago I went off that, I’ll wear what the hell I want. And ironically, I think I look better now than I did ten years ago.

“Don’t get me wrong, if you want to spend thousands of quid, go ahead,” she adds. “Splash out on lipstick, I don’t care. But if you’re going to do that, look different. Do it because that dress is a great shape for your body. Don’t do it because it’s in a magazine.”Eleanor adjusted her writing habits for the making of I’d Rather Go Blonde.

“Usually I write as it comes to me but, actually, for this album I took a block [of time] and literally locked myself away. I think there were a few reasons for that. My mum just died at the beginning of the year. I was aware that life is short; I felt I had to lock myself away.”

Mother-of-one Eleanor didn’t become a hermit while she was writing (“I still fed and watered my child!” she laughs) but her focus shows in her new batch of songs. She started working on her new material back in January, and found plenty to write about.

“It was an interesting time culturally, because the banks were collapsing, and one of those reports about the Church was out,” she says. “Half the country was under water and the other half was going without water – there were huge water shortages in Dublin, for example.”

In Deliver Me, Eleanor tackles the Church head on. The songwriter is dismayed at the hierarchy, and firmly espouses the separation of Church from State.

“Well, we are supposed to be a secular society,” she says. “There is separation. It doesn’t work that way but by law we’re supposed to be. I have no room for the Church while they continue what they are doing. They have not admitted that they covered up, that the cover-up was systemic.”

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.