It isn’t just The Beatles that get by with a little help from their friends. The concept of a “solo” artist is usually a misnomer; unless they’re Hayden Desser most musicians obviously don’t play every note on their records and record them in their own studio. As we saw with Erin Passmore and Belle Plaine’s latest an artist sometimes reaches their highest potential by bringing others into the fold. Such is the case with Halifax singer/songwriter Jennah Barry. Back in 2006 she arrived in Toronto, going to school while performing as part of the orchestral pop band The O’Darling. Homesickness and heartache inspired her to return to Nova Scotia. Her brash sensibilities and her sense of humour returned to her songwriting and five days at the delightful Old Confidence Lodge with her new friends and former bandmates (and famed banjo hero Old Man Luedecke) resulted in a varied set of pop songs that keep the listener on their toes.
A few reviews I’ve read of the record compare songs like the up-tempo “Dead Give Away” to Hannah Georgas; the softer, more alt-country shades on other songs bring to mind Kathleen Edwards. The more power-pop numbers could be analogous to Tegan & Sara tunes. But even without those similarities, as fleeting as some may seem, Barry has put together a record that covers a lot of ground.
The star of the show is her voice: her euphonic, versatile, occasionally ebullient singing is right where it should be at the front and center of the mix. As a solo artist should, she uses her deft vocals to lead her band through the varied styles and arrangements that swirl together everything from sugary pop to contemplative country to feedback-drenched rock. The hooks are where she shines the brightest, imbuing every song with the exact right emphasis, be it earnestness in one song or pathos in the next.
“The Coast” is an evocative opener, perhaps reflective of the wash of relief Barry must have felt returning to Nova Scotia. You can see her sitting on a beach writing the lyrics, watching the waves roll and crash before her. “We know the way our bodies handle in the water,” she sings. “We know the way the water opens like a mouth caught in the rush and buried, begging for an answer. Who are we now to question, watching from the coast?” She’s painting a picture of the lost, the wandering, persons blowing in the dust and trying to find somewhere to land that will provide solid footing. The chorus is as repetitive as the ocean, repeating like the waves and building up strength each time until a series of thundering crescendos. It’s downright majestic.
Barry’s anti-love song love songs are the closest she gets to muscle-bound rockers. “Dead Give Away” is the first and best example. Striking a quick tempo Barry talks about sticking to her guns while she fights with her beau. Shot through with liquid courage she comes out of the gates swinging, only to relent in the end and admit, “I can’t say I don’t want you in my arms.”
The polar opposite is the patient, gorgeous “Sheriff,” a deliberate number that lets Barry stretch out her voice and really show it off. Still, it’s a subtle performance, not a showcase for over-singing so much as proof that less can be more. Using a bear attack as a winking metaphor for a break-up she follows a sparse drum beat and weeping pedal steel guitar with a soft, almost resigned vocal. She’s not even trying to convince herself when she insists in the chorus, “I’ve got hundreds of reasons in my head for why we need each other.” It comes across like a statement she knows is futile but has to be said anyway, something that won’t change the mind of the “sheriff” on the white horse she’s singing to.
Her slower numbers are where Barry is really at her most captivating. “4×4″ paints a clear picture of two people isolated, off in the woods, living an agrarian life that — for some unstated reason — won’t last forever. The shuffling drum beat gives the song an unsteady, impatient feeling and the ominous imagery and wording of a smoking rifle, of fighting off cabin fever in the throes of winter, of “screaming bloody murder” and sparking up in the morning just to blow away at night give the song a visceral unsteadiness. “Slow Dance” is essentially that song’s polar opposite, lyrically. The bright, loving song is as warm as a song primarily rendered on an acoustic guitar can be thanks to Barry’s central conceit of a happy housewife overjoyed to have her man home after a long day’s work. All she wants after providing a meal, some whiskey, and a laugh or two is to be held and enjoy the intimacy of a dance or two. She concedes that she’s not perfect but, “There’s a few things I do get right: I’m tough as nails and I swing some nice,” she insists. It’s easy to believe her.
The album ends with a paean to the men in those songs and all the songs Barry hasn’t written. “Raise a glass for all young men,” Barry asks in the title track. “They fight until they fall apart.” It’s a seemingly-laudatory notion if you consider it outside the context of the rest of the song where Barry describes being thrown around by an enraged man, having her arms broken, and possibly even being shot. The song is heavy on her vocals, a gentle number (with subtle banjo picking by Old Man Luedecke) that belies the violence in her words. It’s a bit of a lyrical tightrope but the song itself is lovely enough.
Really, every track here showcases Barry’s eye for detail and contrast and that really helps elevate the proceedings. Those qualities are there in “Dead Give Away” when the quick pace of the song drops out in the bridge, replaced with a slow-picked acoustic and some dreamy slide guitar. They’re in the subtle build-up of opener “The Coast,” as the song’s last third elevates in intensity with every cymbal crash. It’s in the subtle tweaks to the arrangement of “Sherrif”‘s final chorus and the instrumental drop-outs that run counter to the listener’s expectations. It’s in the lyrical nod to country music outlaw David Allan Coe during the powerful romanticism of “Slow Dance.”
These songs aren’t wildly unfamiliar; Barry and crew are not necessarily reinventing the wheel. But they do inject enough quirkiness and unexpected flourishes to set their work apart. Whatever partial sense of familiarity that comes from genre expectations help to enhance those unique elements.
“The best parts are fleeting,” Barry concedes at the beginning of Young Men. That’s one of the loveliest elements of this record: each song has several moments of sheer melodic bliss, each one different than the next, each one over so much quicker than you want it to be. This is one album that begs to be put on repeat, again and again and again.
You can find Barry’s album available on Bandcamp.