IRISH chanteuse Mary Coughlan returns to one of her favourite haunts, Pocklington Arts Centre, on the penultimate night of her 12-date spring tour on Saturday.

She is, her publicity says, "the equivalent of Irish vocal royalty, arguably the greatest female singer to have emerged from Ireland in recent times", combining "the grief of Billie Holiday, the soul of Van Morrison and the defiance of Edith Piaf".

Mary takes folk, blues and jazz in her stride, her melancholic, sassy singing informed by the pain and demons she has endured in her life, overcoming alcohol and drug addiction caused by childhood trauma.

Melody Maker once said: "A song is not complete unless it has been sung by Mary Coughlan"; hear her interpretations of Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart and Echo & The Bunnymen's Killing Moon and you can only agree.

Mary has returned to the road after heart surgery, releasing the aptly named Live And Kicking, a concert recording from Vicar Street, Dublin in May 2017. "I had stents put in and I was then diagnosed with lung disease, but I'm all good now; I got a clean bill of health on November 1 [2016], so we did that Live And Kicking show last May, just for one night, and it was so good, I was the only one who made any mistakes and we left them in because they were so funny," says the County Galway singer, who turns 62 on May 5.

She is touring with three out of the four musicians from that night, only the drummer missing from a line-up of Jimmy Smith on guitar, Greg Felton on piano and Barry Donohue on bass. "I think I'm singing better than I have ever sung in my life, especially now that I have finished my cardio rehab," says Mary. "So I can have fun for the rest of my life; music is my fun.

York Press:

"Music is my fun," says Mary Coughlan

"I've just gone back to doing some of the songs from my last album [2014's Scars On The Calendar, recorded with Erik Visser], and for this tour there'll likely be something from every album; you know, the usual. Love Will Tear Us Apart, definitely; Killing Moon, probably not."

Mary is also making strides with Woman Undone, a multi-media project, combining the forces of Ireland and Iceland, that will turn into her next album too. "It's a musical/theatrical/video/electronic project that I'm doing with Valgeir Sigurðsson, an Icelandic composer who's done six albums with Bjork and he's worked with Sigur Ros and orchestras too," she says.

"There'll be new songs written by me with music by Valgeir, and we'll present it for ten nights in Dublin in November at the Project Arts Centre, working with two award-winning directors from Dublin, with funding from Ireland and Iceland."

The music for Woman Undone will be mostly electronic, a new departure for Mary. "My son did a Masters in electronic music at Trinity College [Dublin], so I got into it through that. I wouldn't have said it was relevant before, until I heard his music," she says. "But now I appreciate it's very emotional and does things that other musical instruments can't."

In the meantime, Mary will be live and kicking at Pocklington this weekend.

Mary Coughlan plays Pocklington Arts Centre, Saturday, 8pm. Box office: 01759 301547 or at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk