Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The work may well be considered over when an album is done and dusted and the subsequent tour refined and completed, yet for Sally Barker coming off the back of working on the superb 2015 Poozies album, Into The Well, and performing in front of millions on The Voice, the only true way to see out the year was not to endorse television’s supposed pull on the world of music but to plough headlong straight into another music recording session and amaze her ever growing number of fans with a showcase of her own songs and a couple of delightful covers in the Love Rat EP.
Having recorded music since the release of her eponymous debut 1988 album, the handling of external pressure and influences to which Ms. Barker has found herself in is nothing short of courageous and whilst it was understandable that the music took a huge back seat in the intervening years, since she returned with the superb Maid In England in 2014, the aforementioned Poozies album and now the Love Rat EP, it seems there is now no stopping Sally Barker from taking her rightful place once more in the pantheon of music as a woman who captures the atmosphere as if it was a butterfly dancing on a breeze.
The half a dozen songs, include two very cool covers, Burt Bacharach’s and Hal David’s Walk On By, a song that like The Beatles track With A Little Help From My Friends takes on greater resonance each time it appeals to a new audience, and the superb Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, to which Ms. Barker slows down with terrific balance and which the vocals and lyrics no longer seem hindered by the music which most of the time can be seen to be competing for the attention of the listener.
It is though in her own compositions that Ms. Barker once more stands out and in the songs Jealous Bones, the captivating Kissing A Stranger and Heart & The Shell, the dynamite that resides in the singer’s voice is finally given the space it needs to be explored, heard and enjoyed. The Voice may have taken her down a exposed road but it is her own voice, plentiful, giving and remarkable that is the real treasure. Not so much Love Rat, more like Love That.
Love Rat EP is available to purchase via Old Dog Records.
Ian D. Hall