PATRICIA BARBER
Mythologies

Blue Note

Read the Jazzitude review of Patricia Barber/Live: A Fortnight In France
Read the Jazzitude review of Patricia Barber/Verse

Patricia Barber’s new release, Mythologies, is her first CD of new material since 2002’s Verse. That album was a tour de force that found the Chicago pianist/singer/composer writing all the songs, many of which were influenced at least as much by popular singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell as by jazz. 2004 saw the release of Live: A Fortnight in France, which contained one song from this new song cycle—“Whiteworld.” That performance titillated with the promise of the music Barber was creating after receiving a Guggenheim grant. Now, we finally have Barber’s poetic and musical cycle, Mythologies, based on characters and situations from Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Barber is not in the least stymied by the fact that many listeners, even those who enjoy her unique piano work and vocals, will not necessarily understand much of what she references throughout Mythologies. Everything about this set is right: the poetry is damned good, and the music is varied in both style and texture, thanks to the use of some well-placed guest performers. Mythologies may not always hang together perfectly as a song cycle, but overall it is an amazing achievement from a performer who has increasingly taken the difficult road over that she could easily have chosen.

Barber can be problematic and an acquired taste for many listeners. Although her piano playing is first rate, she keeps it somewhat under wraps here, though it is more in evidence than on Verse, where Neal Alger’s guitar was clearly the primary instrument. Her singing, often an instrument of tortured, whispered intimacy, manages to be warmer at times on this disc, though many will still no doubt find her vocals less than enticing. Then there is the problem of art. Barber’s lyrics, her intellectual references and clever in-jokes, scream to the listener that this is art with a capital “A.” All of this may sound like a recipe for disaster, but it is testament to Barber’s musical talent and her charm as a performer that despite some shortcomings, Mythologies draws the listener into the world she creates and holds him or her spellbound.

The opening track, “The Moon,” should sound familiar to those who have been listening to Verse—it was the opening track of that album as well. Here there is a more abstract, extremely soft introduction by Barber on piano, and she stretches the recitative of the opening section much more than on the original. When, with three minutes left to go, the band breaks into rhythm for Barber’s piano solo, it is a funkier feel than the Verse version, which ambled along on a more tribal new age beat. Tenor saxophonist Jim Gailloreto plays the first of several effective solos, offering a more agitated presnce than trumpeter Dave Douglas did on Verse.

“Morpheus” is the first of several sumptuous ballads, and the sound, anchored by Barber’s delicate piano and Michael Arnapol’s bass pedal note, offers a lullabye of sorts, with Gailloreto again offering a solo that fits perfectly into Barber’s musical conception. The lyrics portray a jaded, sleep deprived beauty who asks “Will you sing softly? Will you keep/Watch as the light begins to wane?/Steadfast and sweet, will you remain/God of my dreams, and let me sleep?” Next up is “Pygmalion,” another ballad that explores the relationship between the work of art and its creator, and Barber manages to create a real cabaret atmosphere here. Her piano work is muted but scintillating, and her vocal work is warmer than usual as she intones lines such as “Unrequited love/is what I know of love/spellbound/I will stay.”
“Hunger” explores the theme of food and gluttony, a topic that Barber has written about previously—on Verse’s “I Could Eat Your Words” she explored cooking as a metaphor for love and sexual attraction. Drummer Eric Montzka underpins the song with funky rhythms while Alger gets in some rocking guitar licks. Here Barber brings some much-needed humor to her work: “In Scythia, where the pickings are slim/I’m gorgeous and grateful it’s ‘in’ to be thin/Wan and pale, I court emaciation/in high style and endless mastication.”

“Orpheus,” a song in sonnet form that documents the title character’s pleas to the god of the underworld to release his beloved, it is a slow funeral march, with Barber’s simple minor-key chords and some wailing guitar from Alger. Easily the saddest, most eerie song on the album, it creates a feeling of longing and emptiness. “Persephone,” an ode to the goddess who can travel through both the underworld and the human world, is seductive, with smooth guest vocals contributed by Lawrice Flowers and Paul Falk. Their more conventional vocals are a welcome change of pace, coming as they do some two thirds through the album. “Narcissus” addresses the topic of homosexual love, and the difficulty of differentiating between oneself and one’s beloved—Barber has said that it ‘could be the gay wedding song.’ Gailloreto again chimes in with a fitting tenor solo.

“White World” is a song about Sophocles’ Oedipus, the only song here not related to a character from Ovid. This song, one of the first in the cycle written, has become a popular fixture of Barber’s live shows over the past two years. With its lively jungle beat, it brings a new energy to the cycle. Barber then addresses “Phaeton,” a song about the young man who is unable to drive his father’s chariot of the sun and scorches the earth, wiping out many species in the process. This piece has a hip-hop beat, and features rapping and a children’s chorus in a recitation of various endangered species. It doesn’t quite work, but it’s a small quibble overall. The final piece, the classically-tinged “The Hours” talks about two goddesses that, according to Barber, “are everywhere, watching. They simply watch us as we squirm and scream out in pain and they do nothing but mark time. They never lift a finger. So the song is railing against their callousness, and it is an homage to human courage in the face of Death.” Guest vocal work is provided by Grazyna Auguscik and Choral Thunder, and the piece ends the album on a strong note.

While some will no doubt refer to Barber’s ambitious project here as ‘pretentious’ or ‘self-indulgent,’ that is merely indicative of the serious themes she investigates here and the lyrical and musical sophistication with which she pulls them off. The best jazz-based composers have always been iconoclasts whose work sometimes crumbled under the weight of their seriousness—both Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus come to mind. Mythologies is another stop on the artistic arc that Patricia Barber has been climbing even since before Verse, when her unique, sophisticated takes on jazz standards brought her an audience that has continued to be fascinated with her work. It’s work of a mature artist who has definitely arrived, and one can only hope that she will continue to dazzle with her future projects the way she has with this one.