Jill Barber - For All Time

  by Benjamin Howarth

published: 7 / 6 / 2008

---

I saw Jill Barber last August, the night before I went on holiday. She was supporting Stephanie Dosen at a country evening in the Spitz club. Although Dosen is now quite famous, having sung with Massive Attack and been featured on 'Jools Holland', it was Barber’s set that got the best reception from the crowd that evening. I bought this album from the merch stand as soon as she left the stage, but it has finally only now been given an official British release. If you find Norah Jones a little too good to be true, 'For All Time' may be to your taste. There is the same warm and fuzzy sound, the same gentle melodic qualities, the same themes of love and loss - but none of the studied sense of cool. Barber’s jazz, folk and country influences are probably the same as Jones’, but it sounds a lot less calculated. I still find reason to play 'For All Time' over and over again, almost a year after I first heard it - and there aren’t many albums you can say that about. There is ‘Don’t Go Easy’, which is almost absurdly catchy ; ‘Legacy’, a poignant song written for a deceased friend ; ‘For All Time’, the best of the album’s break-up songs and ‘Starting To Show’, which brings the record to a delightful close, awash with strings and Barber’s most powerful performance. Having said that, I don’t want to oversell this album. It’s a low key affair, with eleven pretty songs about love and loss, and is about as likely to be enjoyed by an Arctic Monkeys fan as I am to play test match cricket for England. But these songs have a McCartney-like directness that nuzzles into your subconscious. If she was gnarled and in her 50's, we’d all be applauding a great survivor. As she’s pretty and in her 20's, we pay no attention at all, which is as curious a signal of the state pop has got itself into as I can think of.

Track Listing:-

1 Just for Now
2 Don't Go Easy
3 When I'm Makin' Love to You
4 Ashes to Ashes
5 Hard Line
6 For All Time
7 Legacy
8 Two Brown Eyes
9 Goodnight Sweetheart
10 The Knot
11 Starting to Show

Post A Comment

---

Comment

Name

your name

Location

ie London, UK

Submit

Check box to submit

Adam Coxon
Adrian Janes
Adrian P
Amanda J. Window
Andrew Twambley
Anthony Dhanendran
Benjamin Howarth
Carl Bookstein
Chris O'Toole
Cila Warncke
Daniel Cressey
Darren Aston

Dastardly
Dave Goodwin
Denzil Watson
Dixie Ernill
Dominic B. Simpson
Eoghan Lyng
Fiona Hutchings
Harry Sherriff
Helen Tipping
Jamie Rowland
John Clarkson
Julie Cruickshank

Keith How
Kimberly Bright
L. Paul Mann
Lisa Torem
Maarten Schiethart
Malcolm Carter
Marie Hazelwood
Mark Rowland
Nick Dent-Robinson
Nicky Crewe
Owen Peters
Richard Lewis

Shirley Procter
Spencer Robertshaw
Steve Kinrade
Steve Miles
Tommy Gunnarsson
Zena Grieg