Patricia BARBER - Verse 2002

Patricia BARBER - Verse 2002
Label: Blue Note

Jazz

Patricia Barber has made enough breakout albums to be brought up on charges. Her career, not to mention her music, has been like a giant rainbow arcing eternally upward with bursts of bright giddy colors and dark moody tones. But like her last album, Nightclub, and before that Companion and Modern Cool, this is the one that will bring her a bigger audience. The difference here is that this is the singer-pianist's first album of all original songs. With Dave Douglas dancing his trumpet around her witty and literate tales, these 10 scholarly vignettes are reminiscent of the way the great Cole Porter educated his listeners while thoroughly twisting the English language in an irresistibly entertaining way. "I Could Eat Your Words" is about philosophy, cooking, and falling in love with your college professor. In it she somehow can "suck the salt from erudition, drink remorse like a cabernet, sweeten with equivocation" and still swing. Many singers would still be stuck on "erudition" while Barber--all sly, darkly slick, and witty--continues to compose from a high artistic perch. Mentioning David Hockney, Edward Hopper, and Goya in the text of "If I Were Blue," and Baudelaire in "You've Gotta Go Home," ain't no easy trick.
By Mark Ruffin.
**
I've been in the past intrigued by Barber's work even though it hadn't always clicked for me, & I hadn't been strongly impressed by the two last discs, _Companion_ & _Nightclub_ (the latter a set of standards so low-key as to be ultimately rather dull). So _Verse_ came as something of a surprise, one of her most fully satisfying albums. Read on the page her lyrics can be a bit arch and over-literary (her enthusiasm for ee cummings is an ominous sign), but as a singer she manages to give them a slightly veiled delivery which puts them over very nicely. She's got a terrific band here--Dave Douglas & Joey Baron are the stars of course, & there's her regular bassist Michael Arnapol, but the real standout is guitarist Neal Alger, whom I've not come across before. He's really the main person responsible for the textures & coloration here much of the time, since Barber herself only plays piano on a few tracks.
There are some stunningly strange moments on the album--the weightless opening of "The Moon", the mournful echoing guitar & tiny shards of a distant string orchestra on "Clues"--as well as some attractive grooves, often in Barber's favourite off-kilter time-signatures (5 and 7). The one dud for me is "The Fire", which seems to me an attempt to work in the territory of short-story writers like Raymond Carver--it's a bit too cliched in its portrayal of a suburban housewife's ennui to work, I think, & the music is nearly static. But the other 9 tracks are often superb, & always take a few risks--the conceits of "I Could Eat Your Words" & "If I Were Blue" could be merely precious (respectively, a students' erotic obsession with her teacher & with philosophy, expressed in culinary conceits; & a dark-toned elegy which draws its comparisons from various artists' characteristic palettes--"David Hockney's pool" "an Edward Hopper afternoon" &c.). But these actually work out well because of the spareness of the settings & because the conceits work to remove the music from a sense of embarrassing or overweening confessionalism. Perhaps Thomas Campion or John Dowland are closer to the mark than ee cummings?

Very much recommended. Like most of Barber's work it'll probably divide people into virulently opposed camps: it was quite instructive to see that in _Downbeat_ they handed this to four critics & ended up, not with consensus, but with two extremely enthusiastic reviews & two bitter pans. I'm on the side of the enthusiasts: how about you?
By N. Dorward.
**
Bass - Michael Arnopol
Drums - Eric Montzka (tracks: 9) , Joey Baron (tracks: 1 to 8)
Guitar - Neal Alger
Trumpet - Dave Douglas
And
Patricia Barber
**
01. Moon (6:02)
02. Lost In This Love (3:01)
03. Clues (4:57)
    Conductor [Strings], Arranged By [Strings] - Cliff Colnot
    Strings - Baird Dodge , Fox Fehling , Judy Stone (2) , Karen Dirks , Katinka Kleijn ,
    Lawrence Brown (3) , Lawrence Neuman , Lee Lane , Lei Hou ,
04  Pieces (5:33)
05. I Could Eat Your Words (7:49)
06. Fire (4:49)
07. Regular Pleasures (5:40)
08. Dansons La Gigue (4:18)
    Lyrics By [Adapted From A Text By] - Paul Verlaine
09. You Gotta Go Home (3:16)
10. If I Were Blue (6:00)
**
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