BARB JUNGR - Chanson : The Space in Between (2000) SACD / FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Timeless as it is, you could have asked, justly, whether or not the new millennium really needed yet another interpretation of the Jacques Brel songbook, so often had it been attempted, both successfully and miserably, in the preceding century. Barb Jungr definitively answered that question on Chanson: The Space in Between, and she answered resoundingly in the affirmative -- it is an exhilarating purr of an effort. But then, Jungr, a longstanding anchor of the British alternative cabaret circuit, had already been compared to both Lotte Lenya and Edith Piaf prior to recording this first full-fledged effort in the genre (she had previously performed some of the music live and Bare did include a Brel song amongst its set list), so its accomplishment is no surprise. The album, too, goes well beyond Brel, featuring as it does a repertoire that includes songs by Cole Porter, Jacques Prévert, Léo Ferré, and E.Y. "Yip" Harburg from the old tradition, as well as a tune from the pen of Elvis Costello and a modern chanson from compatriot Robb Johnson. There are several reasons why Chanson is such a splendid realization of Jungr's vision. For one, the singer specially commissioned translations of the Brel and Ferré pieces from Johnson and fellow cabaret haunter Des de Moor, and they represent the most accurate renderings of these songs into English. Secondly, producer Calum Malcolm, utilizing an extremely sympathetic band, creates rich, poignant backdrops for the songs. You can hear the mythic Paris of yore wafting throughout, particularly in "Sunday Morning St. Denis" and "Cri du Coeur," while there is an equally strong strain of straight-ahead jazz ("Quartier Latin," "The Space in Between"). Most important, though, are the ravishing readings given by Jungr. Her performance ranges from the almost desperate and passion-haunted, both in life and love ("La Chanson des Vieux Amants"), to the positively triumphant ("Marieke") with equal skill, sounding as gorgeously weathered on "I Love Paris" as she seems delightfully guileless and clear-eyed on "New Amsterdam" (with its flawlessly ringing production). This is cabaret in its highest form.  by Stanton Swihart 
Tracklist :
1 Ne Me Quitte Pas  5:32
Jacques Brel
2 Sunday Morning St. Denis  6:29
Robert A. Johnson / Sam Mosley
3 I Love Paris  3:50
Cole Porter
4 Les Marquises  6:32
Jacques Brel
5 Cri du Coeur  2:40
Henri Crolla / Jacques Prévert  
 6 Quartier Latin  5:13
Léo Ferré
7 Marieke  4:02
Jacques Brel / Gérard Jouannest
8 April in Paris  2:48
Vernon Duke / E.Y. "Yip" Harburg
9 La Chanson des Vieux Amants (The Song of Old Lovers)  5:56
Jacques Brel
10 New Amsterdam  3:32
Elvis Costello
11 Les Poètes (The Poets)  3:19
Léo Ferré
12 The Space in Between  3:14
Barb Jungr / James Tomalin
13 No Regrets  2:48
Charles Dumont / Michel Vaucaire
Credits :
Accordion, Piano – Kim Burton (tracks: 2 to 9, 11, 12)
Acoustic Bass – Julie Walkington
Percussion – Kevin Hathway (tracks: 2, 4, 6, 10, 12)
Piano – Russell Churney (tracks: 1, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10), Simon Wallace (tracks: 3, 8, 13)
Sampler – James Tomalin (tracks: 1, 4 to 7, 10, 12)
Violin – Rolf Wilson (tracks: 3, 5, 6, 8, 11 to 13)
Vocals – Barb Jungr

BARB JUNGR - Every Grain Of Sand (2002) HDCD / FLAC (tracks), lossless

Every Grain of Sand is a breathtaking revelation on several fronts. First, Barb Jungr treats Bob Dylan as one of the great tunesmiths of the American popular tradition. Not merely as rock & roll's preeminent songwriter, the direction from which virtually all others have approached his canon, but as a sophisticated composer the equal of the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, or Cole Porter. Jungr dramatically re-reads that canon and she fearlessly reshapes it in the process. To cite the most radical instances, she turns "Things Have Changed" into an Eastern European jig and "Tangled up in Blue" into a jaunty, jazzy western, while "Born in Time" is a marvel full of Baroque voicings. One may quibble -- and Dylan fanatics, known to be provincial on occasion, certainly will, perhaps vociferously -- with an arrangement here or a lyrical interpretation or subtle shading there without -- and here is the magic of the album -- in the least invalidating the singer's choices. Indeed, part of the sublime beauty of Every Grain of Sand is that it inspires, even challenges, one to make personal revisions and reinterpretations. Ultimately, Jungr is one of the few artists who has managed to not only come out on the other side of this songbook unscathed, but to actually come out having enhanced its gravity, significance, and unvarnished beauty as well as her own. She is not merely singing, but telling stories. She opens up a window of vulnerability and sensuality that had previously sat stoic beneath the surface of these songs and suffuses them with such a delicate, gauzy luminosity that they seem to glow from the inside out. Her singing is soulful and emotionally naked, and the performances are so expressive that you take something new away with each listen. The treasures ("I'll Be Your Baby Tonight," "Ring Them Bells," "Not Dark Yet," "Is Your Love in Vain?," and "What Good Am I?") tucked away here are endlessly rewarding. If you think you've heard Bob Dylan -- or Barb Jungr -- before Every Grain of Sand, you are, simply put, mistaken. by Stanton Swihart  
Tracklist :
1     I'll Be Your Baby Tonight 4:06
Bob Dylan
2     If Not for You 3:09
Bob Dylan
3     Things Have Changed 4:57
Bob Dylan
4     Ring Them Bells 3:14
Bob Dylan
5     Not Dark Yet 4:36
Bob Dylan
6     Don't Think Twice, It's All Right 4:37
Bob Dylan
7     Is Your Love in Vain? 3:29
Bob Dylan
8     It's All over Now, Baby Blue 4:10
Bob Dylan
9     I Want You 3:13
Bob Dylan
10     Sugar Baby 7:40
Bob Dylan
11     Born in Time 3:10
Bob Dylan
12     What Good Am I? 3:58
Bob Dylan
13     Tangled Up in Blue 5:33
Bob Dylan
14     Forever Young 2:57
Bob Dylan
15     Every Grain of Sand 4:22
Bob Dylan
Credits :
Accordion – Kim Burton
Cello – Sonia Oakes Stuart
Double Bass – Julie Walkington
Harmonica – Barb Jungr
Percussion – Gary Hammond
Piano – Russell Churney (faixas: 4, 9, 13), Simon Wallace (faixas: 1-3, 5-8, 10-12, 14-15)
Tenor Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone – Mark Lockheart
Violin – Sonya Fairburn
Vocals – Barb Jungr

BARB JUNGR - Love Me Tender (2005) SACD / FLAC (tracks), lossless

Another exquisite, at times astonishing, album from Miss Jungr. Unlike Bob Dylan, whose songbook the singer had so expressively reimagined on Every Grain of Sand, Elvis Presley was never himself a composer, depending instead entirely on professional publishers for his material, much of it originally chosen for its commercial prospects; however, even at its worst -- the soundtracks to the crap cookie-cutter movies the King made in the '60s usually come to mind here -- his recorded output had a certain consistency to it. On reflection that is primarily because, even at their qualitative best, his songs were as much about the sensual, muscular, bel canto performances and tied to the superstar singer's outsize, magnetic personality as they were about the merits of the tunes themselves. In other words, you are listening to Elvis sing those songs more than you are listening to the songs he is singing. In a way, that makes Jungr's Love Me Tender all the more remarkable: you do not hear the King at all here except in faint echoes and traces, like barely remembered fairy tales you were told as a child as you were drifting off to sleep. This isn't an exercise in dress-up, as it very easily might have been. Instead you are treated to a phenomenally responsive singer finding her way into and breathing the oxygen of forgotten stories, while, in the process, refitting them to say something real and useful, something personal about your world and about the one long past. In a sense, you are hearing these songs -- many of them now considered classics (pop/rock standards, if such things exist) -- for the first time. Worlds of passion and pain, discovery and dislocation exist in these songs. They are so entirely reinvented by Jungr, her brilliant arrangers Adrian York and Jonathan Cooper, and producer Calum Malcolm that the prevailing mood of the album is transformed into a mosaic, a complex map of one woman's fully lived life, from the dizzy, tender love letters of expectation to the lonesome heartbreak hotels that litter the highways of life, and all the attendant reveries, roadblocks, and realizations along the way, until she arrives at the gospel of her -- your -- existence, an exultant take on one of Presley's own favorite Baptist hymns, Thomas A. Dorsey's "Peace in the Valley." Jungr may have been "Looking for Elvis," as she sings in the album's sole self-written original, but she found herself. And in that discovery, there is a certain gesture of sublime benevolence toward the listener. Love Me Tender is an autobiography of shared memory, but more than that it is a primer to how people refashion that memory to ascertain and navigate their own trajectories. by Stanton Swihart  
Tracklist :
1     Love Letters 3:13
Victor Young
2     Heartbreak Hotel 4:04
Mae Boren Axton / Tommy Durden / Elvis Presley
3     Long Black Limousine 4:23
Bobby George / Vern Stovall
4     Wooden Heart 3:04
Bert Kaempfert / Traditional / Kay Twomey / Ben Weisman / Fred Wise
5     Are You Lonesome Tonight? 8:03
Lou Handman / Roy Turk
6     Kentucky Rain 4:49
Dick Heard / Eddie Rabbitt
7     In the Ghetto  3:39
Mac Davis
8     Love Me Tender 5:28
Vera Matson / Elvis Presley
9     Always on My Mind 5:05
Johnny Christopher / Mark James / Wayne Carson
10     I Shall Be Released 5:32
Bob Dylan
11     Tomorrow Is a Long Time 6:00
Bob Dylan
12     Looking for Elvis 3:44
Barb Jungr / Adrian York
13     Peace in the Valley 2:56
Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey
Credits :
Acoustic Bass – Mario Castronari (faixas: 6, 12)
Cello – Thangam Debbonaire (faixas: 10)
Harp – William Jackson (faixas: 2)
Keyboards – Adrian York (faixas: 1, 2, 4 to 8, 12)
Keyboards, Clarinet – Jonathan Cooper (2) (faixas: 3, 4, 9, 11)
Viola – Rebecca Brown (faixas: 10 to 12)
Violin – Dominika Rosiek (faixas: 10), Miriam Teppich (faixas: 10)
Vocals – Barb Jungr