A hopeful romantic
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday October 24, 2009
Jill Barber's optimism shines through in her postwar-influenced orchestral pop. TODAY we face a Scrabble play-off in the Sydney suburbs, a tense fight to the last letter between a deadly serious competition player from Canada, Jill Barber, (who also writes and sings songs) and a Sydney journalist who hasn't played in years, is making cups of tea he doesn't drink and has given over his dining table to the battle (and as you can guess, is preparing his excuses early, just in case).Barber, 29, dressed as usual in an elegant spin on postwar clothing, cedes the opening move to Australia. I open solidly but unspectacularly with "hook" and she responds with "hedge". Quietly, the fight is on.We're evenly matched for several rounds, with the sound of accordion player Robbie Grunwald practising on my front lawn as the backdrop. Then I hit open air (and double word score) with "guava". The 30 points stretch my lead dramatically and gain the approval of The Scrabbler, which is not a given in the circumstances. "I'm fairly competitive," she chuckles mirthlessly. "And I'm not happy that you are in the lead." Why so serious about Scrabble?"My fiance [Grant Lawrence, a Canadian broadcaster] €“ his family has a cabin up on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, so we spend a lot of time up there," Barber says. "It is totally remote, no electricity, water access only and so we spend a lot of time playing parlour games."This is in keeping with the retro stylings of Barber's latest album, Chances. It's a collection of original songs in the style of music that was popular before Elvis shook a hip; with strings, woodwind and vibraphones to sweep your dress along in the first dance of the night. It's neither sticky sweet nor too knowing but instead is elegant and melodic.Like Barber's retro clothing, it sits comfortably alongside the image of families playing parlour games in a more relaxed age. And it is decidedly, unapologetically romantic, as she had explained to me in a previous conversation."I'm a romantic person so I've always been attracted to a lot of the old classic romantic songs," she said. "In a sense I'm nostalgic for a time that I never knew, where it was acceptable to be unabashedly romantic."Today, as she begins to chip away at my lead on the back of words like "yew" (a type of evergreen tree, don't you know), she says that while the songs were written after she met Lawrence, some of them were written to create a mood, rather than send a message to or about him."When people come to see me play or put on my record I want to make them feel a certain way. And the way I want them to feel is romantic," says Barber. "Not just romantic about another person but romantic about life."A wearer of combat boots and flannel shirts as a teenage fan of Pearl Jam and Nirvana ("They were angry and I was angry, they were frustrated and I was frustrated"), this daughter of a scientist and a teacher from outside Toronto isn't being ironic, though she knows some will hear the out-of-their-time songs and assume that."We felt like we were walking a fine line of kitsch, of over-sentimentality. [If some] find it cheesy or overly earnest, then that's their problem. I can't worry about that."For now, her worry is about the game which is nearing its end. My run of high scores and proud words is dribbling away in single figure scores from mingy vowels but Barber is powering home with words such as "quire" (one 20th of a ream of paper) and "zee" (allowed in this international competition).Tellingly, the music has stopped outside. Grunwald has put down his accordion and is leaning against the tour manager's car while guitarist/orchestrator/producer Les Cooper is sprawled on the ground attending to a laptop. Even the birds have gone quiet.With three moves left Barber takes the lead and then pummels me to win by a comfortable 17 points, leaving me whimpering in her wake and barely able to raise a hand to shake across the packed board.Barber is smiling as she explains that Chances does not feature heartbreak or pain because that's not where she's at these days."It can be harder at times to write a happy song [but] I turned a corner in my life where the opposite happened," she says, reminding me that her fiance will be joining her midway through this five-week tour of Australia."Now I have to make an effort to write the sadder song. As soon as I found I had a knack for writing a happy, positive love song I couldn't stop."Barber joins her two-piece band, who have patiently waited for two hours, and they continue their drive north from Sydney.You might have expected a bigger band, if not an orchestra but as she'd shown the night before at a private gig not that long after landing in Sydney, Barber and her buddies can do elegant and charming without the strings and without sleep. And of course you can't fit an orchestra into the back of an F3-bound sedan.Anyway, she'll be back here for gigs soon enough. And maybe a re-match. If she dares.Jill Barber plays at Notes Live in Newtown on November 4 and at the Newtown Festival and Brass Monkey in Cronulla on November 8.
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald