Barbara
J. returns with her sophomore album A Box Full of Records and its
three stunning lead singles – covers of The Korgis’ “Everybody’s Gotta’ Learn
Sometime,” The Carpenters’ “Rainy Days and Mondays” and Poco’s “Crazy Love”
(which features no less than Mike Webb contributing keys to the song) – and
while these tracks are true to the classic framework that made them hits to
begin with, they’re inarguably as original as it gets in this brand new,
pointed execution. I’ve always been hesitant to embrace cover songs and have
always struggled to appreciate records made up wholly of material written by
other artists, but in the case of these tracks, it’s impossible for me to
dismiss them as anything other than modern gems.
SOUNDCLOUD: https://soundcloud.com/malibubarbara
“Crazy Love”
and “Everybody’s Gotta’ Learn Sometime” see Barbara J. putting all of the emphasis
on the texture in the melodies that hold the righteous rhythms together, while
“Rainy Days and Mondays” focuses mostly on her awesome delivery of the lyrics.
In all three instances, she’s using the backing band to create as much of a
mood as she is the stylish poetry in the songs, but each of these tracks
displays a different approach to the recording process that, for all intents
and purposes, Barbara J. would appear to have mastered.
These songs
suit the style of her singing perfectly, and in “Crazy Love,” we really get to
see what her voice is capable of when it’s given enough room to really spread
out and cultivate a mountainous melody. The string arrangement is pretty
conservative, but her vocal track is simply brimming with muscular bass and treble,
cutting through the glowing verses with impunity. She’s come a long way since
her first record, and I actually think that she should explore covering more
material from this particular period in pop music history.
There’s an
immeasurable amount of emotion in all of these singles, and though it gives the
chorus in “Rainy Days and Mondays” all of its zeal, I don’t think that the
vocal ever becomes so intense in the big picture as to overshadow the
instrumental aspect of these songs at all. Barbara J. is the type of artist who
pays attention to the littlest of details in her music, and as a result, her
releases never feel lopsided or inarticulately constructed. If her peers could
somehow find a way to adopt a similarly disciplined attitude towards making a
record, mainstream pop might not be in the inexplicably trite mess that it is
right now.
HEAR NOW: https://barbaraj.hearnow.com/
To say that
it’s awfully hard to make legendary music feel as real and tangible as it did
for the era of listeners who made it a classic would be an understatement of
criminal proportions, but in the case of A Box Full of Records, Barbara J.
makes it look all too easy. She’s on top of her game and dishing out some of
the most sophisticated and sensuous melodies of her career so far, and if you
ask me, there isn’t an artist around – in or out of her scene – making the
deeper creative impact that she is at the moment.
FACEBOOK: A Gordon
Lightfoot Retrospective: https://www.facebook.com/sundownbarbaraj/
Mindy McCall
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