Latest on Patricia Barber album Clique is a version of Stevie Wonder's All In Love is Fair

So where, question, are we up to with the latest from Clique, the upcoming Patricia Barber album? Answer: a very moody and appealing treatment of 'All In Love is Fair' the Stevie Wonder song dating back to 1973's classic Innervisions. …

Published: 10 Jul 2021. Updated: 2 years.

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So where, question, are we up to with the latest from Clique, the upcoming Patricia Barber album? Answer: a very moody and appealing treatment of 'All In Love is Fair' the Stevie Wonder song dating back to 1973's classic Innervisions. Interestingly Chicago singer Barber tells Salon regarding the process of the song's interpretation: "If you pull back, everybody will hear it; if your voice cracks, everybody will hear it, if you change from chest voice to head voice, everybody will hear it; if you are lying, or absent, everybody will hear that, too."

Discussed last month in these pages the record is a standards ''encores'' affair to appear on the specialist audiophile Impex Records label, Barber brilliantly covers Lee Hazlewood’s 'This Town' best known as sung by Frank Sinatra among other encore selections that Barber has performed in the past in the initial track teased out.

Double bassist Patrick Mulcahy, drummer Jon Deitemyer, guitarist Neal Alger and saxophonist Jim Gailoretto join the great Chicagoan singer. Mulcahy is prominent as the arrangement of 'This Town' unfolds. The album is a 6 August release. Full tracklist: This Town, Trouble Is a Man, Mashup, One Note Samba, I Could Have Danced All Night, The In Crowd, Shall We Dance, Straight, No Chaser and All is Fair in Love. Patricia Barber photo: press shot via Shore Fire Media

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Track of the week: Evermore by Renee Rosnes

How 'Evermore' goes. It runs to over seven minutes and there is a lot packed in. Firstly an original composition of the great jazz pianist Renee Rosnes' who takes a dreamy balladic solo featuring contained chord progressions very little modulation …

Published: 10 Jul 2021. Updated: 2 years.

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How 'Evermore' goes. It runs to over seven minutes and there is a lot packed in. Firstly an original composition of the great jazz pianist Renee Rosnes' who takes a dreamy balladic solo featuring contained chord progressions very little modulation initially and a Bill Evans-like atmosphere, Rosnes then begins to state the first theme around 40 seconds in with a definitive feel.

Then double bass icon the über Pettifordian Christian McBride enters with a very deep note joined by Carl Allen on brushes. The tempo stays mostly the same, Rosnes is rhapsodic and poised entwining with McBride's plucked lines. Chris Potter on tenor saxophone later delivers some let's be blunt ecstasy on his solo managing to express and yet to keep something back so that it does not overpower. Rosnes' response becomes more tactile, a more percussive feel to the way her fingers make contact with the keys.

By this stage it's less than 5 minutes in. And then the surprise is McBride switching to arco bass, practically cello-like timbrally, a new ''voice'' enveloping the piece and Rosnes accompanying in a changed role to suit the new mood, her quiet deep note detonations illuminating. Then she solos again with bass deftly arpeggiating behind her and drums accompanying. Potter comes back again with the main theme and the piece then slows towards its moving conclusion, McBride's ringing note underpinning the effect installing an ultimate grandeur.

Drawn from Kinds of Love with percussionist Rogério Boccato, completing the personnel, a Smoke Sessions September release: other tracks are 'Silk,' 'Kinds of Love,' 'In Time Like Air,' 'The Golden Triangle,' 'Passing Jupiter,' 'Life Does Not Wait (A Vida Não Espera),' 'Swoop' and 'Blessings in a Year of Exile'. Renee Rosnes, above and top: photo via DL Media