Maura O’Connell : “Blue Is the Colour of Hope”:<i> Warner Bros.</i>

This daughter of County Clare started out with the traditional Irish folk band De Danaan, but her fourth solo album establishes that she can sing pretty much whatever she pleases with winning results. O’Connell applies her pure, full-bodied, tawny-hued voice to folk-rock anthems, a Broadway-worthy, showstopping-tear-jerker, a soul-influenced lament and even a dreamy, seductive late-night saloon-jazz croon. Although she doesn’t write her own material, O’Connell has assembled songs astutely, drawing upon writers both obscure and well known (among the latter are Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Paul Brady, and the team of Paul Carrack and John Wesley Harding). The 10 songs here form a varied but cohesive, album-length meditation on the high psychic cost of loving and losing. O’Connell’s sturdy, dignified delivery allows her to probe the hurt unstintingly and hit thrilling emotive peaks without ever sounding overwrought (Cher and Michael Bolton need to hear this album). Although there is no unmitigated joy here, O’Connell conveys the hope promised in the title: There’s a sense that painful romantic episodes don’t have to mark stark endings but can become necessary steps toward wiser ways of loving. Fans who enjoy the thoughtful romanticism of Carpenter, Rosanne Cash (both of whom lend backing vocals here) or Bonnie Raitt should have no trouble warming to O’Connell’s latest.

--MIKE BOEHM