Flo McSweeney - Picture in a Frame (2019)

Singer and actor Flo McSweeney has been singing for years in many different contexts and her first solo album draws with poise and sensitivity on the sources that have fed her art over the years.

Flo, a popular music RTÉ TV presenter on the likes of Megamix, TV Gaga in the 1980s, is also recalled by your reviewer as the smooth and sweet-voiced chanteuse with Moving Hearts and she also fronted the Manchester band A Certain Ratio. She was present for one of the Hearts' final gigs at the National Stadium in 1984 - a cracker, I recall it well - and while there have been reformations since but not so much with singers, if any.

The soft torch, or perhaps soft rock singer, is nowadays a regular guest with the 17-piece Hot House Big Band, and she has long adored Billie Holiday. In the course of this 13-track solo album, she includes the wistful Holiday/Arthur Herzog Jr ballad Don't Explain, along with Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan's Picture in a Frame, the title track.

Also in the megamix are Leonard Cohen's Leaving the Table, Van Morrison's Moondance, Paul Buchanan's Mid Air, Nick Lowe's The Beast in Me and Melody Gardot's Your Heart is as Black as Night.