★★★★★
Few performers in or out of jazz are as consistently brilliant as Patricia Barber. Smash, her first album for Concord Jazz, simply reconfirms Barber's status as a consummate artist. Her perfectly chilled voice, at once stern and tender, remains singularly compelling, and the fluid intelligence of her playing is typically enthralling...
- jazztimes.com
2013-03-12
★★★★★
In the classic schism, now a half-century old, West coast jazz is kept cool and East coast jazz is bopped hard (the term "Hot Jazz" had already been used by the pre-swing pioneers of the form). Vocalist, writer, and pianist Patricia Barber is a Chicagoan, so she can have her choice, I suppose. And, in one sense, she looks to the West. Barber's so cool, you might catch a chill from listening...
- www.popmatters.com
2011-01-20
★★★★★
Patricia Barber is an extremely intelligent jazz songwriter who sings and plays piano. She is either beloved or reviled by the people who have heard her records--she inspires strong feelings on either side of the divide. I'm reasonably sure that that says more about the listener than about Patricia Barber's music itself, but I can understand people who think her music is pretentious and overblown and, occasionally, boring. I don't agree, but I can understand...
- www.popmatters.com
2011-01-20
★★★★★
No matter what I say, this album will sell a bunch, at least in jazz terms, because there's an audience out there for clever singer/songwriter/pianists who exude hip like steam off a racehorse. Barber has recently dipped into the American songbook, but on Verse she's back in the more familiar Modern Cool territory that brought her so much attention in the first place. Not many people can fit the word "synergistically" into a line, but Barber can and does...
- www.hour.ca
2010-11-09
★★★★★
On earlier albums such as Café Blue, Nightclub and especially Modern Cool, Patricia Barber displayed a singular ability to deliver a lyric, be it a clever original or a standard, with just the right touch to carry the meaning. On Mythologies, sad to say, the lyrics, delivery and music simply don't match. The project is ambitious: a rendering of ancient myths into postmodern jazz. Somewhere along the line, though, Barber tried to cram too much in, and it all ends up sounding forced.
- www.hour.ca
2010-11-02
★★★★★
Track Listing: Gotcha, Dansons La Gugue!, Crash, Laura, Pieces, Blue Prelude, Witchcraft,Norwegian Wood, Whiteworld, Call Me Personnel: Patricia Barber (piano, vocals), Neal Alger (guitar), Michael Arnopol(bass), Eric Montzka (drums) Style: Beyond Jazz Read more reviews of A Fortnight in France Patricia Barber has always been edgy, iconoclastic, and daring, and she has committed the cardinal sin of insisting on creative control of her product...
- www.allaboutjazz.com
2010-08-20
★★★★★
Second-division jazz singers can be as annoying as Z-list celebrities: there are too many of them, and they insist on making records. They get in the way of the genuine, first-division talent. Patricia Barber is actually in the premier league, but she doesn't fit the pattern of supper-club entertainer; she has a fabulously musical and intelligent take on the genre. Cole Porter Mix is superficially the most commercial thing she has made for a while - 10 standards by Porter, plus three of her own...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2010-04-02
★★★★★
There's rarely any in-between with vocalists' live recordings. More often than not they're muddily recorded "greatest hits" packages that require the artist (and, by extension, the listener) to compete with rattling cutlery and phlegmatic patrons...
- www.jazztimes.com
2010-02-19
★★★★★
It was as if a skylark had swallowed a bassoon that first moment singer/pianist Patricia Barber opened her mouth: a blues-hooting, nervously flitting bird with smartly semantic wiseacre lyrics beating her own drum vocally and rhythmically. Forget that her poorly titled albums seemed to signal some ersatz beat revivalism. Hers was a thoroughly modern listen whether tackling the classics or crafting bold new tunes low and slowly...
- www.jazztimes.com
2010-02-19
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