THE MEN I LOVE

Barb Jungr at the Civic Theatre

23.01.10

Barb Jungr, singer-songwriter, and her accompanist/arranger/producer Simon Wallace brought this new collection to a warmly appreciative Civic last Saturday.

It's a kind of New American Songbook, taking standards from the Age of Rock & Roll and giving them a radically different reading. Best exemplified by Neil Diamond's I'm A Believer, beautifully sung in a plaintive yet powerful re-imagining. And Todd Rundgren's I Saw the Light, for which she reserved her sweetest tones.

Other men she loves included Bob Dylan [You Ain't Goin' Nowhere], Paul Simon [My Little Town] and Levi Stubbs [This Old Heart of Mine]. If, as Jungr claims, our tastes are driven by the music we danced to when we were young, then that would explain why Motown, sounding superb even without the strings and the brass, figures so large in her repertoire.

The other rationale was the inevitable decline from young love to pain and ageing. Down to the River [Bruce Springsteen], the existential Once in a Lifetime [David Byrne and Brian Eno] and Can't Get Used to Losing You [Andy Williams].

She left us with Wichita Lineman [Glenn Campbell].

Classic songs, sung with real heart and soul. Jungr is raconteuse as well as chanteuse – she could have been chatting in a Rochdale laundrette - and I relished her sighting of Micky Dolenz in the fruiterers, and the chapter of accidents that resulted in the tour CD not being available till next month.

You can download a track from it, free, here

naimlabel.com - Wichita Lineman [Free Download]

Here's a number by another of the men she loves, Leonard Cohen