Ovid’s gods return – to the jazz club

PATRICIA BARBER
Mythologies (Blue Note)

Chicago-based pianist/vocalist Patricia Barber spent eight albums building an influential jazz audience with her intimate poetry and brilliant songwriting. The Guggenheim Committee agreed, awarding a rare Fellowship to this popular singer. The result is an 11-song cycle based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses. There’s nothing esoteric here; think more The Power of Myth than Campbell’s scholarly Masks of God series. Mythologies is filled with playful retellings of a Narcissus that isn’t necessarily vain and an Icarus that never falls. Barber’s backing band (guitar, drums, bass) and horn sections help flesh out an exquisitely textured album bordering sedate lounge atmospherics with sudden flourishes of guitar-driven frenzy. Few artists can straddle a line as fine as the soft, lyrical “Pygmalion” before launching into the searing “Whiteworld,” the latter a tribute to Oedipus. Besides a lackluster, Dadaist attempt at hip-hop on “Phaeton,” this is a mythology worth retelling for some time.