1. Easy To Love
2. Late Afternoon And You
3. I Get A Kick Out Of You
4. You're The Top
5. Just One Of Those Things
6. Snow
7. C'est Magnifique
8. Get Out Of Town
9. I Concentrate On You
10. In The Still Of The Night
11. What Is This Thing Called Love
12. Miss Otis Regrets
13. New Year's Eve Song
Patricia Barber (vocals, piano, melodica)
Chris Potter (tenor saxophone)
Neal Alger (guitar)
Michael Arnopol (bass)
Eric Montzka (drums, percussion)
Nate Smith (drums, percussion)
The jazz critic of the London Times Clive Davis
is a fervent admirer of Patricia Barber and eloquently sings her
praises. As I respect his views I gave her last album Mythologies
a listen and found it very sticky going, despite the many plaudits
it received. Her new disc is based on more solid ground, at least
for me, in mining the Cole Porter songbook.
The singer-pianist starts with a boson nova inflected
Easy To Love. I Get A Kick Out Of You is re-worked cleverly
with shifting bass and drum patterns and a good tenor solo from Chris
Potter – it’s quite allusive harmonically. You're The Top cleaves
far closer to the melody line, reigning in harmonic exploration. Propulsion
rules on Just One Of Those Things which is taken at a very
up-tempo.
Barber reinforces the Gallic insouciance of C'est
Magnifique with her use of the melodica and the general languid
air and turns on a funkier groove in Get Out Of Town with its
swinging yet contained piano solo. A feature throughout is the loose-limbed
rhythm section and its adaptability to the various metres and tempi
that Barber dictates. This is almost painfully reinforced in In
The Still Of The Night where there is a relentless, almost insistent
rhythmic charge and an angular, rather bad tempered solo from Potter.
Miss Otis Regrets begins, appropriately – but how many other
singers would think of it? – as a monologue for Barber before the
guitar adds its gloss on the narrative retelling. It is for me evidence
of Barber’s superiority as a vocal conversationalist – and here her
voice is not as androgynous as it can be; and it really is at its
most androgynous in Easy to Love.
There are three songs by Barber, for which the lyrics
are printed in the booklet. Of this trio Late Afternoon And You
is probably the pick; a contemporary take on Porter featuring
an excellent guitar solo from Neal Alger.
Invention runs throughout this disc. It didn’t quite
convince me of Clive Davis’s high opinion, though there are strong
flickers of it.
Jonathan Woolf
CD Reviews
BLUE
NOTE RECORDS 01468 [56:11]
