Jill Barber - 'For All Time'
Jill Barber’s debut album ‘For All Time’ was released in her native Canada almost two years ago now. Since then she’s received a lion’s share of industry attention, receiving half a dozen awards (including Best Recording and Best Female Recording at the 2007 East Coast Music Awards), being nominated for half a dozen others (notably Best New Artist at the 2008 Juno Awards) while pursuing an unrelenting touring schedule supporting such acts as Josh Ritter and Joel Plaskett.
Point being: a UK release has been a long time in the works. And by and large the wait has been worthwhile, ‘For All Time’ being a highly polished collection by an assured young songwriter. Opener ‘Just For Now’ slowly slips into bloom, Les Cooper’s slide guitar gently mingling with smouldering organs under the demure melody languidly picked out by Barber to generate an atmosphere redolent of lazy afternoons spent flopping in a hammock.
As with fellow country-woman Kathleen Edwards, Barber’s songs are largely low-key little alt-country affairs such as ‘Don’t Go Easy’, its recurring line ‘ever since you swept me off my feet you’ve kept me on my toes’ seemingly encapsulating an entire relationship. This isn’t to say that everything fits this mould, such as the 30s lounge act of ‘When I’m Makin’ Love To You’, her Martha Wainwright-esque purr complemented by a poised, almost dainty piano and clarinet accompaniment.
Not everything intrigues as much as these however. ‘Ashes to Ashes’ for example, aside from having one of the most overused names in the history of music, feels directionless and lacking in depth, while the adolescent clichés that riddle ‘For All Time’ in its critique of juvenile romantic naivety end up being more irritating than insightful. Indeed, a couple of musically lovely songs are let down by painful lyrics, the worst culprit being ‘The Knot’, heavily laden with overwrought matrimonial imagery, ‘you tie your love in a knot / that will never be undone’.
Barber’s voice is so lovely however that it’s very easy to ignore such defects. ‘For All Time’ also benefits from an excellent producer in the form of Les Cooper, whose handiwork has resulted in a generally gorgeous and full sound, particularly obvious on tracks such as ‘Legacy’ or the pristine elegance of album closer ‘Starting to Snow’. This is a glimmering debut from a talented artist.