Verse

Patricia Barber | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 27, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Blue Note Records
• ASIN: B00006C2CC
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #179,015 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. The Moon

2. Lost In This Love

3. Clues

4. Pieces

5. I Could Eat Your Words

6. The Fire

7. Regular Pleasures

8. Dansons La Gigue

9. You Gotta Go Home

10. If I Were Blue

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A compelling album and a highpoint for Barber, January 8, 2003

By 

N. Dorward "obsessive reviewer" (Toronto, ON Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Verse (Audio CD)

I've been in the past intrigued by Barber's work even though it hadn't always clicked for me, & I hadn't been strongly impressed by the two last discs, _Companion_ & _Nightclub_ (the latter a set of standards so low-key as to be ultimately rather dull). So _Verse_ came as something of a surprise, one of her most fully satisfying albums. Read on the page her lyrics can be a bit arch and over-literary (her enthusiasm for ee cummings is an ominous sign), but as a singer she manages to give them a slightly veiled delivery which puts them over very nicely. She's got a terrific band here--Dave Douglas & Joey Baron are the stars of course, & there's her regular bassist Michael Arnapol, but the real standout is guitarist Neal Alger, whom I've not come across before. He's really the main person responsible for the textures & coloration here much of the time, since Barber herself only plays piano on a few tracks.

There are some stunningly strange moments on the album--the weightless opening of "The Moon", the mournful echoing guitar & tiny shards of a distant string orchestra on "Clues"--as well as some attractive grooves, often in Barber's favourite off-kilter time-signatures (5 and 7). The one dud for me is "The Fire", which seems to me an attempt to work in the territory of short-story writers like Raymond Carver--it's a bit too cliched in its portrayal of a suburban housewife's ennui to work, I think, & the music is nearly static. But the other 9 tracks are often superb, & always take a few risks--the conceits of "I Could Eat Your Words" & "If I Were Blue" could be merely precious (respectively, a students' erotic obsession with her teacher & with philosophy, expressed in culinary conceits; & a dark-toned elegy which draws its comparisons from various artists' characteristic palettes--"David Hockney's pool" "an Edward Hopper afternoon" &c.). But these actually work out well because of the spareness of the settings & because the conceits work to remove the music from a sense of embarrassing or overweening confessionalism. Perhaps Thomas Campion or John Dowland are closer to the mark than ee cummings?

Very much recommended. Like most of Barber's work it'll probably divide people into virulently opposed camps: it was quite instructive to see that in _Downbeat_ they handed this to four critics & ended up, not with consensus, but with two extremely enthusiastic reviews & two bitter pans. I'm on the side of the enthusiasts: how about you?

44 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Reverse., September 22, 2002

By 

G. D. Geiss (Harrisburg, Pa. USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Verse (Audio CD)

Clearly, I will be in the minority on this, but I do not like this disc. It pains me to admit that, since I count myself as a confirmed Patricia Barber fan. In fact, I like it so little that I considered a two star rating, opting in the end for three based on my overall faith in Ms. Barber's talent. I just don't think she consistently shows that talent here. If you are pretty much a mainstream jazz listener who found Pat Barber fascinating in the past for her edgy, minimalist , ironic writing and playing, I think you would be well served to be a bit cautious about this effort.

This is the first disc where Ms. Barber wrote all the music. What that means is that you get precious little melody. Even in her best work: "Touch of Trash", "What a Shame", "Let it Rain", there is not a strong melodic presence. On past albums that have featured her songs, though, this was balanced by her inventive, idiosyncratic adaptations of others' melodies like "Use Me Up", "Ode to Billy Joe", or "You, the Night, and the Music". The steady diet of atonality here is hard to like. You can respect it for its intellectual bite, but it's hard to like it. Even harder to like are the unwelcome excesses of trumpeter Douglas.

Under these circumstances, the "verse" of the title carries a heavy load. Sadly, in my view, it's not consistently up to the task. Mostly, it lacks the concrete, edgy irony and sharp wit of her best work. It seems, at times, almost like earlier, less mature work that she's gotten brave enough to put out. At its worst it degenerates into sophomoric, beat era coffee shop listing. Witness the entire content of "Lost in Love" which consists of 32 lines of "where is this or that" coupled with "I'm lost in this love", or "Clues" with its laundry list of 27 of them like "the edge of the knife", "the black of the night", etc., etc. This from the same pen that wrote: "can't you make those downtown hopping/ grocery shoping/ perky, plodding, cheerful folk/ go away"... "c'mon bring down the sky/ let the clouds and me have a good cry/ let it rain." Hard to believe!

Is it all bad? Absolutely not. Ms. Barber's too talented for that. "Pieces", despite losing it way at the very end, is quite good; as is, generally, "I Could Eat Your Words". Better yet is "If I Were Blue" which is just Pat and guitarist Neal Alger (a bright spot throughout) with its painterly references, spanish sounding guitar, and gentle (for Barber) poignancy. But the star of this disc is the delightfully smash mouth "You Gotta Go Home". It's the most concrete, direct, ironic, and witty song of the group and features the beautifully layered drums of Eric Montzka (sadly, absent otherwise) and the ever present drive of Arnopol's bass. Dynamite!

But those few are not enough, for me, to redeem the whole. After a string of successes for Pat and her band(s), I rate this one as a reverse. Borrow somebody else's copy before you buy it.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars verses and clues of a woman, October 5, 2002

By 

C. E. Silva Rios (Caracas, Distrito Capital Venezuela) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Verse (Audio CD)

Patricia Barber is a verse. She is a woman who happens to melt with words. And, fortunately, our souls can experience this wonderful event when Patricia softly rhymes. Her music is sophisticated and gentle and surprising and intelligent. It's doubtlessly new. Nevertheless, one can find an astonishing glimpse of regular things of one's everyday life: "the same cup of coffee, the same dog, the same wife." So she decided enchanting us calling along four stupendous musicians: Michael Arnopol, Neal Alger, Joey Baron and Dave Douglas. Dig Patricia's verse and you will learn how's that she's blue, or a piece of peace, or a clue.