Barb Jungr has made a speciality – some might even say her own art form – out of taking well-known songs, and discovering far more subtlety and meaning in them than people ever knew they had. As she explains in the notes accompanying My Marquee: “ I love well-constructed songs with lyrics that, however apparently simple, can yield other levels of interpretation and subtlety.” One writer has called what she finds in these songs “confessional depth”.
That is certainly a part of the story. She has interpreted Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Sting, The Beatles, Appalachian folk songs... One thing I admire is her predilection for working with pianists/arrangers who share her enthusiasm for constructing medleys or double-songs. I have particularly fond memories of the immensely clever and effective sequence which she and Simon Wallace made from combining Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through The Night” with “Will You Love Me Tomorrow", written for The Shirelles by Carole King and Gerry Goffin.
For this album she has discovered a new seam of promising material. She happened to met Martyn Keeble, who runs Marquee Records, and happened to throw one of those “Has anyone ever thought of…?” ideas at him. Perhaps, she suggested to him, someone could put together a collection of songs with an association to the Marquee from its heyday and do it as an album project. And since the mission of Marquee Records, formed in 2020, is “to reinvigorate the ethos and spirit of [the] early halcyon days” of the club... it turned out that Keeble actually loved the idea so much, he just lobbed it straight back at Jungr, suggesting that she might like to do it hersef. This album is the result.
And so we have eight tracks – six songs plus two medleys. Pete Townshend’s “Substitute”, for example, is highly effective through Jungr's prism as dangerous, venomous, total-conviction, gloves-off class war. In “Sunshine of Your Love”, she explores the use of a wide vibrato which will not be to everyone’s taste, but then has a soundscape-ish, very produced ending (Michael Smith has done ambitious, space-y things here) which works really well. Paul Simon’s “Sparrow”, with real bird-sounds and backing chorus is all tenderness, but is also vivid and highly effective.
My highlight is “Drug Trilogy”, in which Jungr and her band – Australian-born pianist Jenny Carr who switches to Hammond, plus that impeccably strong bassist Dudley Phillips and fine drummer Jonathan Lee – give us three different songs and make them work well together. The dovetailing of three psychedelic visions all makes perfect sense as it is happening. This trilogy consists of The Move’s “Flowers in the Rain”, Traffic’s “Hole in My Shoe” and the Small Faces’ “Wichycoo Park / It’s all too beautiful” and has a wonderful sense of three songs naturally coalescing.
My Marquee is a fascinating album, but it does remind that, when I think of Jungr's artistry, what I really look forward to is a live performance – ideally in a small venue which Jungr completely “owns” like Crazy Coqs in Piccadilly. All those darting looks, glints, winks, all that semaphoring of innuendo and ambiguity, there is nothing quite like it.
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