Full Tide was released on the other side of the pond in 2005, and probably the true core of
Mary Black fans picked this up already. Better late than never, and as Curb Records virtually whispered this out, it's a wonder that listeners get to hear it at all, so they should be grateful. As an album,
Full Tide most closely resembles
Shine in its breadth and depth. Yeah, that is a good thing. It's not the shiny production as much as the material itself. Recorded in Ireland and Australia, the album contains some stellar, perhaps career-defining performances of a number of tunes: her readings of
Bob Dylan's "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" and "To Make You Feel My Love" completely reinvent them. The former is an anthem as Celtic and full of old-world notions of travel and dislocation and community as one could imagine. The emotion in her voice is a warm fire for the battered soul to rest in. On the latter,
Black offers a vulnerable and utterly sincere paean of amorous truth to the Beloved, whether or not the desired one has chosen the protagonist or another.
Dylan's was a boast in some way;
Black's is not a plea, but an understated declaration of desire and commitment that transcends time and space. As moving and convincing as these performances are, they are not the true gems in the body of this album. In fact, her version of
Sandy Denny's "Full Moon," with a pianist, a bassist, and a string quartet, blows them away. Her voice, full and dark, yearns across time and space for the absent one. It's an elegy to a love, but also to love itself and friendship as well. This is key in that there are a total of four songs here by the late
Noel Brazil --
Black's longtime collaborator and favorite songwriter -- who passed away in 2001.