A Distortion Of Love (Remastered) Patricia Barber

• 1Summertime06:15
• 2Subway Station #509:33
• 3You Stepped Out Of A Dream07:38
• 4Parts Parallels05:07
• 5Or Not To Be07:04
• 6Yellow Car05:51
• 7Yet Another In A Long Series Of Yellow Car04:28
• 8I Never Went Away04:39
• 9My Girl03:45
• 10By Myself04:58
• Total Runtime59:18

Info for A Distortion Of Love (Remastered)

„Pianist and singer Patricia Barber's second album (and major-label debut) is a consistently interesting, but not always completely rewarding, array of original instrumentals, vocal standards, and surprise cover versions. The arrangement of 'Summertime' that opens the program is eerie almost to the point of creepiness, and all the more effective for it: after a long instrumental prelude, Barber sings the lyrics over the most minimal bass-and-piano unison pedal point, her voice goosed with reverb and wailing softly like a ghost. 'Subway Station #5,' the original composition that follows, is nervous, jumpy, barely tonal, and moves niftily from a contrapuntal and polyrhythmic introduction into a straight swing section. The problem is that it lasts almost ten minutes, and by the seventh or eighth minute, its ideas seem pretty well played out. 'Or Not to Be' and 'Yet Another in a Long Series of Yellow Cars' suffer from similar treatment. But her singing on 'You Stepped Out of a Dream' and, especially, her sweet and touching rendition of the soul classic 'My Girl' are quietly spectacular. There's every reason to expect great things of her in the future.“ (Rick Anderson)

Patricia Barber, piano, vocals
Wolfgang Muthspiel, guitar
Marc Johnson, bass
Adam Nussbaum, drums, shakers, cheap shoes, finger snaps
Carla White, finger snaps
Big Kahuna, finger snaps

Recorded on November 25th-27th & 29th, 1991
Produced by Brian Bacchus

Digitally remastered

Patricia Barber Patricia Barber has been in the vanguard of the new school of female jazz vocalists who in the past several decades have been exploring intriguing improvisational terrain beyond classic balladry and bop-infused standards. She was born in a suburb of Chicago to a saxophone-playing father, Floyd "Shim" Barber, who had played with Glenn Miller. After studying classical piano and psychology at the University of Iowa, Barber moved back to Chicago to play jazz and in 1984 landed the gig that launched her career, playing five nights a week at the famed Gold Star Sardine Bar. Before long there were lines outside the door on weekends. Her following grew larger and more fanatical when, in 1994, she moved her base of operations to the Green Mill, the north side club that is the nerve center of the indigenous Chicago jazz scene.

Barber has recorded seven albums, including two previous full-length CDs for Blue Note/Premonition, modern cool (1998) and Nightclub (2000), and the Blue Note/Premonition six-track EP Companion (1999). Her major label debut was A Distortion Of Love, on Antilles, in 1992. But for most of her current audience, it all began with café blue, on Premonition (later Blue Note/Premonition), in 1994. It hit like something inexplicable, introducing a voice one critic described as "a pure dark whisper straight up from the soul" and a distinct onstage persona that has been characterized as "a beat musician and a bop intellectual." café blue led to Barber winning the "Female Vocalist/Talent Deserving Wider Recognition" category in the 1995 Down Beat International Critics Poll (an honor that she has since consistently claimed).

This album contains no booklet.