Jill Barber - For All Time

A few weeks ago, I got off the train at the wrong stop. Instead of Clapham Junction, which professes to be Britain’s busiest railway station, I got off at Queenstown Road, which does not. Actually, I think I realised I was getting off at the wrong stop as I did so, but my pride wouldn’t let me look so foolish as to turn away from the open doors and sit down again. So off I got. At this point I had a choice, and instead of waiting in a deserted railway station for another train, I decided the weather was fine and the iPod was ready and waiting. I put the thing on shuffle and selected a playlist I had put together recently.

First up was Justin Rutledge, still sounding as good as he was when I reviewed him for this very website. Next, a cheerful piano intro prefaced a nice, friendly, relaxed voice: “You’re a hard act to follow, heaven knows”. This was quite a coincidence. Justin Rutledge is, of course, a hard act to follow. But I was reminded that after I had reviewed his second album, The Devil on a Bench in Stanley Park, I received an email from an associate of his, telling me that if I liked Justin, I’d like Jill Barber too. She sent me a CD – I suspect a review was hoped for in return, in which case I can only apologise for the delay. It was Jill Barber’s song Don’t Go Easy which I heard as I walked along the main road.

Then, last week, in a tiny carpeted living room underneath a London pub, a friend and I watched and listened to Jill Barber as she performed songs new and old, using only her own voice and her own guitar. Between songs, she told us short tales which highlighted the warm and funny personality which gave rise to her songs. The strange coincidence of the train fiasco, and the gorgeous little show, inspired me to revisit the album I had been sent.

For All Time, the record in question, has that rare quality – it employs a huge range of musical genres without compromising either the sound or what the artist is trying to achieve. Don’t Go Easy is actually the second song on the album; the opening number is Just For Now. Part sultry, with a mysterious vocal quality, and part homely, with a comforting feeling, the song reminds you of the moment after you wake up on a sunny Sunday – it’s slow, it’s languorous. Don’t Go Easy is a cup of coffee – it springs you awake and you’re ready to challenge yourself and face the world:

‘Cause before too long
This path I tread
Will be too overgrown for followin'

And will the road ahead
Be much further on
From the one I've been long travellin'

There is also the first hint of Jill Barber’s jazz influences, with an interesting, original guitar solo, and jazz will come and go throughout the rest of the album. Next up is When I’m Making Love to You, where Barber sings with a voice which is at once unadorned and yet rich with suggestion – more than a hint of sensuousness, a velvety feel which doesn’t overwhelm, and a maturity far beyond her years. This is bar-room jazz, with an ambling piano drenched in 7th notes and a jaunty clarinet providing the backdrop. The tempo changes, with pauses and drawn-out notes giving way to a more frantic pace when the narrator remember most vividly, not the act of making love, but the way it made her feel.

The songs on For All Time aren’t all about romantic relationships. Ashes to Ashes is a poignant reflection on, and a tribute to, Barber’s deceased Grandmother. Wistful piano and vocal, with some nice percussive acoustic guitar playing, steer the song away from the song’s bleak title, towards its more thoughtful sentiments: “We let go, because we must”.

But Jill Barber freely accepts that most of her songs are about love affairs, and For All Time revolves around its title track. There’s more of her trademark guitar style, which can verge on a sort of softly-spoken harshness. The beautifully bendy and windy guitar solos provide some counterpoint to that, but it is Barber’s brittle voice which dominates proceedings. It’s that maturity again, suggesting a life lived to the full, with experiences packed in. But there’s a simplicity too, coming out of Barber’s youth; something which isn’t naïveté, but which seems determined to produce music that we can all relate to. The lyric “I thought we’d be lovers for all time” is an example of this, combining an everyday message of lost love with an elegant sense of phraseology that most people can only hope to achieve.

She doesn’t have all of the answers though. Legacy is the song on this record which grabs you most immediately. The narrative device it female to female, as Barber sings to some mysterious Rebecca, with a rising emphasis on the second syllable of the latter’s name, putting all of the feeling she can into that vocal moment. The song has a real yearning quality, a sense of fond tragedy (“burning like an old spotlight”), which seems to suggest that although she is asking questions of Rebecca, does it get lonely, do you ever come out to play, it really seems that the loneliness and uncertainty are switching constantly and fluidly between the two protagonists. This song also represents Barber’s biggest foray away from a jazzy backing and into something resembling a stately and considered Nashville sound, featuring a slide part which is never allowed to dominate. Barber is never so confident as she is in this song, letting the harmonies get so close to her own melody that they almost touch her, daring her to send them away.

Just as Barber never lets her band get out of control, she never seems to let her lyrical expressions run wild, either. This is meant as a compliment. Goodnight Sweetheart is a perfectly formed story of a break-up. Stoical and realistic, she uses that common utterance, “good night”, as a metaphor for the finality of the situation, and this gives the story an air of peace. The music employed reflects this as well, featuring a harmonica break which eases gradually from down-home one-note lament to a broader, chordal farewell. Only the occasional vocal break near the end betrays her genuine sense of anguish, but generally Barber is too considered for that, as life goes on:

I think we both know that you’ve made up your mind
So please say the words, don’t try to be kind

However, the truth might be a bit simpler than this. It could be that the love whose end is told in Goodnight Sweetheart was simply not the real thing. Immediately after that song, The Knot provides a much more emotional response to such matters. The mention of everlasting love appears to act as a trigger for her, and when she compares love to a knot that will never be undone, that last word is released along with all of her pent-up emotions, and a genuinely romantic country sound is unleashed at the same time.

After such an extreme, For All Time ends with a simply plucked and sung final word on love. The verdict is that nothing is certain, and none of us know what’s ahead, least of all those closest to the answers. We can only begin to guess at what’s going on. As Jill Barber puts it, “I can outline my feelings but I can’t fill them in”. When the classical string instruments enter, at first elegant and then broken and emphatic, they reflect what’s being said – matters of love are matters of spiritual beauty, but they can also be extreme, difficult and interrupted. In terms of the music, this song is the perfect end for this album, giving it a complete feel – you don’t want less, but you’re happy with what you’ve had (for now). But the song also makes clear that there is more to come from this story-teller. She’s just finished making a new album, and I can’t wait to hear it.