Band: Jill Barber
Concert: February 21, 2009
By: Clara Lavery
Date: March 18, 2009

“Can you put that disco ball on one more time?” Jill Barber asks sweetly, batting her eyelashes somewhere over the heads of her adoring audience on February 21st at Toronto's Mod Club. The lighting technician obliges in an instant, dots of light briefly illuminating the doe-eyed faces of all those in attendance.

This audience will do anything for Barber, and she knows it.

The twice-Juno-nominated songstress and Queen's University alumna got her start playing folk songs on an acoustic guitar at Kingston's Grad Club. Things are decidedly different Barber tonight: decked out in an enormous white satin tutu skirt with a five-piece swing band backing her - some members doubling or even tripling on instruments as quirky as the accordion - it is clear that the young musician has changed her tune considerably.

Tonight marks the Toronto launch party for Barber's latest album, Chances, the fourth in a growing list of critically acclaimed records. 2004's Oh Heart features six of the artist's best songs and won Barber the honour of Best Female Recording Artist of the Year at the Nova Scotia Music Awards the following year. These songs all prominently feature Barber on acoustic guitar and carry a distinct lo-fi singer-songwriter sound, coupled with themes of heartbreak, the confines of city life, and even her favourite chord (A – 7th minor, for those curious). 2006's For All Time continues this trend as Barber explores themes of family (the beautiful “Ashes to Ashes” recalls her grandmother's life and death), home, and new love. Barber's low, honeyed voice floats above simple and familiar yet undeniably haunting chord progressions. Like many acoustically based, sad-but-thoughtful folk artists, Jill Barber has a distinctly Canadian sound, which quickly gained her the attention of CBC Radio 3, champion of indie songwriters and bands alike. CBC 3 provided the songwriter with regular internet air-time, and in no time Barber's sound was popular with the growing indie crowd.

While long-time fans will remember Barber's distinct alto voice intoning simple accoustic folk and broken-hearted ballads, Chances pays tribute to the great stylings of jazz crooners such as Sinatra, Cosby, and Fitzgerald. The change couldn't be a better choice for Barber – her unique, honey-sweet voice, which listeners and critics have forever compared to Etta James' unforgettable style, almost sounds as though it were from another era entirely. Her flirtatious stage persona endears her to sweetheart-status in the eyes of her enthusiastic, enamoroured audience. “How many of you folks are married?” she asks, and a sea of polite, middle-aged hands wave eagerly. “Gosh, I admire y'all,” she smiles, and the audience really believes her.

Through the course of her set, Barber manages to woo the crowd by artfully balancing flirtatious cheekiness, sweet sorrow, and unbridled exuberance. Charming the audience first with the swoon-worthy title track, she sways around the stage, beaming at each of her band members in turn. When, mid-way through the show, the five men leave the stage, Barber adorably apologizes to the crowd for sending off such talented musicians, before more than making up for it with more melancholy, unabashedly personal love ballads. By the time the band returns to the stage, Barber is ready to recruit the help of the entire packed audience of the Mod Club. With the boisterous call-and-response blues tune “Oh My My”, not a mouth in the crowd remains clammed shut, and not a pair of hands refuses to provide the enchanting singer with a beat.

Barber's fans appear to be of CBC stock: professorial seniors, blackberry-toting forty-somethings, and professional twenty-something couples who are, effectively, middle-aged. This suits Barber just fine. These folks sit down as if they were in a concert hall, listen attentitively as they would a symphony, and, best of all, applaud thunderously and with ovations. When Barber leaves the stage after a much-appreciated encore, many of the show-goers sigh with contentment and a tinge of sadness, reluctantly returning to present-day after an evening of old-time swing and blues.