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Album Review
by SaschaS
3-1-2005
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| Patricia Barber: 'A Fortnight in France' |
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Patricia Barber: 'Live - A Fortnight in France'
(BlueNote)
Subvertainment #5: music to unite the world
Just a few months ago The European Unity’s got bigger - we are 25: more psyches to be exploited in the name of… Spirit? Soul? Art? No, the reality is the post-capitalist all-consuming society where debt is the way of life. Who needs cultural revolutions when you can charge everything? Viva Euro!
Only few years ago the French musicians seemed to cross La Manche as often as ferries and we had delightful refreshment from the usual fare of the predictable local artistes… Air, Daft Punk, Cassius, Phoenix… Well, that was then and now - Air’s album has been mildly received, Dafts remain silent till 21 March when the third disc, ‘Human After All’ appears…
Phoenix had a new album but you’d be hard to find out… ‘Alphabetical’ was its name but the Brit public has replaced again its international interest for the parochial flavouring… The Beta Band were correct before splitting up: there are more zeros than heroes and the trend deepens: the decline is on the up, originality is frowned upon, compliance is the name of the fame game… What’s the ethic? Has greed become a virtue? It feels we are cryogenic’d between vespertine and madrugada: everything is crap and we all know it but pretend it has some meaning, like Duran Duran’s reunion. Or, the return of Morrissey…?
Consumers queue outside the Stepford Centre of Culture, the huge Truman-vision beams budget amusement park-cum-cathedral images from the Tesco’s front aisle… Let’s get curious for a minute and discard all the clapping, fawning and people, who can't choose between decaf and caffeine, hyping no-hopers into mass favoured insta-idols…
We proudly dodge the relentless barrage of bland, recycled, karaoke’d and downright banal. Kitsch is too good a word for the downward spiralling; mission impossible is quality. We have a compelling proclivity for things – sounds in particular – that are strange, risky, gauche, exigent, anti and avant[i]. But, then there is simple beauty…
Such as Patricia Barber, the jazz doyen whose ‘Live - A Fortnight in France’ has given many a darkened night a meaning. The lady takes you by the hand and leads you over the elegant, intimate, soulful, lets-make-love choons… Starting seductively with ‘Gotcha’, the lady commands some sonic ‘Witchcraft’ to take us through the ‘Norwegian Wood’ to the vastness of the ‘Whiteworld’ [from her 2002 album ‘Verse’].
The seductive combination of her calm but probing alto, the subtle, unsentimental nuances in her phrasing and her penetrating, metaphorical lyrics put you under her spell. And, after 10-year-career this Chicago native knows the drill and the spiel. Recorded at venues in three French cities (Metz, La Rochelle and Paris), it's a chance to hear this fiercely independent vocalist and her versatile trio performing at their improvisational best for something really special.
Patricia Barber is a true original in the overcrowded world of contemporary vocal jazz.
9.5/10
SaschaS
3-1-2005
Patricia Barber’s album ‘Live - A Fortnight in France’ is available now on BlueNote
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