Connected

Jill and Matthew Barber tell musical stories from The Family Album

Jill and Matthew Barber offered an enchanting and warm performance at the Regent Theatre last Thursday, filled with touching personal moments and woven skillfully together into a rich musical tapestry. Both brother and sister have built successful music careers independently— The Family Album is their first professional collaboration. But the songs and performance bear the hallmarks of two people who know each other in a deep and fundamental way.

Jill Barber has enjoyed success in a more mainstream and jazz-influenced way with popular hit songs including Chances, Oh My My and Never stop loving you. Matthew has hewn a more rugged career, in the tradition of the literate singer-songwriter.

They have met in the middle in this collaboration. Together they are more sure, more poised. The combination reveals aspects of the music—dare I say personalities— not apparent before.

After a short intermission, the Barbers came onstage alone and descended the steps in front of the Regent Stage to join with the audience—beseeching them to join in their version of Buddy Holly’s All I have to do is dream. Their music, their performance, had already broken that wall. The audience was theirs from first few notes. The separation created by a soft-seat theatre had already evaporated.

The highlight among an evening of sublime diversion was, for this correspondent at least, One True Love, a song stripped bare of affectation and pretense. It begins with Jill Barber’s pure voice accompanied only by a simple acoustic guitar riff rolling over and over again. Then the bass drum slips in along with Matthew’s voice. The words speak a view of life guided by principle and hardened by self-reliance as the basis for deep human connection. The song rises subtly and proceeds to an almost obstinate and direct declaration.

The Barbers were on stage just as the world was learning of the passing of Leonard Cohen.

The Family Album includes a cover of a song made famous by Cohen—but written by Emmanuel d’Astier de la Vigerie in 1943 about the French Resistance. But it was Cohen’s departure that echoed through the Barbers’ haunting version of the song The Partisan.

The performance ended too soon—as such experiences tend to do. The audience filed out of the Regent feeling so much better than they did going in—but wishing the conversation could go on.

The Family Album is available wherever fine music is sold including the General in Wellington and Books & Company in Picton.