Album Review: Clique from Patricia Barber

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Album:  Clique

Artist:  Patricia Barber 

Label:  Impex Records 

Website:  https://www.patriciabarber.com

 

Pianist-vocalist-composer Patricia Barber emerges with her latest CD Clique, a bluesy smooth jazz endeavor groomed in smokey, cabaret-esque atmospherics.  Barber creates an intimacy with her audience that projects a personalized listening experience.  Produced by Barber and Jim Anderson, the release has a mix of jazz standards and a single original number written by Barber.  She travels from emoting brooding feelings to soaring on heavenly wings with lyrics describing sensations of sheer elation.  Like voyaging around the world, Barber journeys through a wide array of human emotions with the acumen of a seasoned traveler.


The funky beats of Patrick Mulcahy's bass garb the track "The In Crowd," penned by Billy Page with jolts of electric streaks, putting a thrust in the lyrics as Barber shines light on the ego, "I'm in with the in crowd / I go where the in crowd goes / You're in with the in crowd / I know where the in crowd moves... we breeze up and down the street / We get respect from the people we meet... it's easy to find romance... other guys imitate us but the original is still the greatest."  The pumping motion in Mulcahy's bass prop up Barber's vocals perfectly.

 

Mulcahy's bass and Barber's vocals sprinkle the recording with their magnetic duets, displaying complementing facets from his sparsely splayed notes to her richly textured vocals.  "Shall We Dance" additionally features Jim Gailloreto's tenor saxophone that layers the melody in soaring toots.  Her remodeling of Stevie Wonder's tune "All In Love Is Fair" bolsters a compassionate lilt in her voicing that gives her narration a sage-like trait enveloped in a spiritual sonorous.

 

Barber's own original track "Mashup" presents an attractive spontaneity in her piano playing, canvassing a broad range of patterns from rambling doodles to intense quivers and elegant musings.  Her rendition of Alex Wilder's torchlight sizzler "Trouble Is A Man" is delivered with a perceptive voicing that understands the plight of a woman in love.  She switches to a laid-back swagger in her treatment of Antonio Carlos Jobim and Newton Mendonca's flirtatious ditty "Samba de Uma Nota So/One Note Samba."

 

The bluesy smoothness in Barber's playing and singing is conducive to cabaret settings.  She projects an intimacy with her audience that makes the listening experience inviting.   A sesoned traveler of the classic jazz terrain, Barber demonstrates an intuitive response in her delivery that compels listeners attention.

 

Musicians:

Patricia Barber - piano and vocals

Patrick Mulcahy - bass

Jon Deitemyer - drums

Neal Alger - acoustic guitar

Jim Gailloreto - tenor saxophone

 

 

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