BUY CD Produced by Patricia Barber (Concord Records - 2013) On Smash, her January 22, 2013 debut on Concord Jazz, Patricia Barber reiterates her unique position in modern music as a jazz triple-threat – imaginative pianist, startling vocalist, and innovative composer (international release dates may vary). With a new band and a dozen new compositions, she also continues her two-decade crusade to retrieve the ground that jazz musicians long ago ceded to pop and rock: the realm of the intelligent and committed singer-songwriter, tackling even familiar subjects (like love and loss) with a nuance and depth beyond the limits of the Great American Songbook. Once again – in the crisp chill of her vocals, as well as the fiery feminine intellect that informs her music and lyrics – Barber makes most of her contemporaries sound like little girls. A prime example is the title track, where Barber paints the end of a love affair with subtly stated allusions to destruction: the erosion of edifices; a bloody road accident. The lines are more akin to poetry than conventional song lyrics, as she depicts "the crumbling of tall castles built / on kisses and blood / and dreams so like sand." The song's reprise compares "the sound of a heart breaking" to "the sound of / the red on the road" – a devastatingly effective mélange of synesthetic imagery. Aided by a raw, forceful guitar solo, the performance illuminates a counter-intuitive realization about loss: "It just struck me, as it does everyone who experiences great loss, that on the outside, no one can tell," Barber explains. "You go to the grocery store, and everything's the same, which is shocking. It struck me that this is the sound of a heart breaking: silence. You're alone. And I felt that this was an interesting juxtaposition, since the sound of a heart breaking should be the loudest, screamiest, shriekiest combination of sounds there could be." Barber has another song on the subject of "loud, shrieky" emotion: "Scream," paradoxically set to a gentle, quiet melody that belies its message, and which has proved extremely popular with those audiences hearing it prior to this recording. "Scream / when Sunday / finally comes / and God / isn't there . . . . the soldier / has his gun / and the war / isn't where / we thought it would be." As Barber points out in conversation, with only the slightest sarcasm, "It's an angry song – and everyone wants that." Her anger finds a more whimsical (but no less impactful) outlet in the catchy "Devil's Food," written specifically from Barber's perspective as a gay woman: "boy meets boy / girl meets girl / given any chance / to fall in love / they do . . . / like loves like / like devil's food / like chocolate twice / I'm in the mood / for you . . . ." She wrote the song in reaction to [...]
