Imelda May - More Mayhem - Non-Album Tracks (2011)

I've been meaning to post this album for months, but I've hesitated because there are two songs for it that I've been trying to find. However, all this time has passed and I still haven't found them. I'm trying to post the stuff I have on Imelda May chronologically, so this has stopped me for posting anything from her. Thus, I'm going to post this now, and if those two songs show up later, I'll just have to update this.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Imelda May is the whole package. She's got a great voice, she's a talented songwriter, and she looks like a star. She's pretty big in Britain and Ireland but very little known elsewhere, so if you still don't know about her yet, give this a try.

In 2010, May released the album "Mayhem." It was a hit, reaching the top ten in Britain and going gold there, and reaching number one in Ireland. In 2011, rather than release a new album, she put out an enlarged version of the "Mayhem" album with four new songs, plus three other previous released songs, and called it "More Mayhem." I'm using the "More Mayhem" title and cover here, but I'm only including the four new songs. The other seven songs here come from various other music projects she had going on in 2011.

The four songs from the official "More Mayhem" album all fall into her rockabilly style, including a cover of the Patsy Cline classic "Walking After Midnight." The rest have a much wider stylistic range. She does covers of 1950s classics "I'm Lookin' for Someone to Love" and "Train Kept a Rollin'" still in her rockabilly mode. But she also gets in touch with her Irish roots with "Mountains to the Sea" and the standard "Danny Boy." She also does a lullaby she wrote herself for a charity, "Make a Wish." She finishes it all with the Christmas classic "Silent Night."

All in all, this is a solid album. I wish she actually would have put out an album like this instead of the supersized "Mayhem" idea. She wouldn't put out another studio album until 2014. (Though as we'll see, she kept busy.)

As for the two songs I still can't find, one is her version of the Buddy Holly song "Rocking Around with Ollie Vee," done for the Holly tribute album "Listen to Me." The problem is, it's only a bonus track, and most versions don't have it. The other one is a cover of "On My Radio," a ska hit by the band The Selecter. That was done for an extremely rare various artists album called "Reworked: Songs from the John Lewis TV Adverts." If anyone has either or both of these songs and can share them with me, I surely would appreciate it! Then I can add them to this album.

UPDATE: On November 4, 2022, I updated the mp3 download file. I added one song I'd previously missed. It's a version of May's original song "Kentish Town Waltz," but in duet form with Lou Reed, of all people! Apparently, record producer Tony Visconti became a fan of the song shortly after it was released and passed a recording on to Reed. Reed liked it so much that he asked May to record a duet version. That was put on the B-side when the regular version was released as a single.

01 Road Runner (Imelda May)
02 Gypsy (Imelda May)
03 Blues Calling (Imelda May)
04 Walking After Midnight (Imelda May)
05 I'm Lookin' for Someone to Love (Imelda May)
06 Train Kept A-Rollin' (Imelda May)
07 Make a Wish (Imelda May)
08 Mountains to the Sea (Mary Black & Imelda May)
09 Danny Boy (Jeff Beck & Imelda May)
10 Baby, I Love You (Imelda May)
11 Kentish Town Waltz [Duet Version] (Imelda May & Lou Reed)
12 Silent Night (Michel Legrand Orchestra with Imelda May)

https://www.imagenetz.de/kC9ST

As mentioned above, the album cover here is the exact one for the official "More Mayhem" album, though the contents are drastically different.