Low key though intimately affecting on an epic level McKee’s first official live album is characteristically stripped down and acoustic, forgoing a more predictably lavish full-band affair. Yet the simple guitar and piano arrangement in no way stops pretty much every moment being one to savour. Offering radically different versions of over-produced 80’s beautiful enigmas such as ‘Shelter’ and ‘Belfry’ from Lone Justice’s second album and swansong, along with her own ‘A Good Heart’ that Feargal Sharkey made her a pretty penny with and an awesome duet with Susan Otten on ‘In The Long Run’ – yes, the theme from ‘Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls’ - that just begs and pleads for a full Maria in high diva mode to record this is an essential purchase for McKee fans as well as anyone harbouring any doubt about the possible transcendent power of her voice.

An elegiacally angelic version of Springsteen’s ‘Backstreets’ and her half-brother Bryan Maclean’s ‘Orange Skies’ from his days in Love make it a candid curio, one that could well have been a double incorporating other career highs like ‘Panic Beach’, ‘Absolutely Barking Stars’ and The Boss’s ‘Candy’s Room’. As it is, it is a luxuriant breath that bears some baiting waiting and wondering what curtain the little diva will appear from behind next.
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- Stu Gibson