Mary Margaret O’Hara
VIRGIN 1991
A-side: 'Christmas EP'
Outside-the-box folk poetess summons Christmas spirits.
Having sculpted boho art rock, jazzy longing, keening ambience and leftfield funk to her own purging ends on the spellbinding Miss America three years earlier, Mary Margaret O’Hara would issue one last original song, on this festive EP, before electing to sit out her contract with Virgin. Weary from protracted label disputes and unbothered by industry machinations, the mysterious Canadian singer took a tender axe to some well-worn festive staples to prove her love of Christmastime (underlined at Barbican’s Twisted Christmas concert in 2008). While her haunted lap-steel take on ‘Silent Night’ and soothing bass clarinet murmuration through ‘What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve’ work wonders, ‘Christmas Evermore’ went into deeper ethereal territory, letting O’Hara’s intimate torch skills excel over lazy acoustic strums, multi-tracked harmonies and loose supper club percussion. A wistful conclusion to troubled times, at moments she edges into the howling coo affected in the spooked mid-section of Morrissey’s ‘November Spawned A Monster’.