Barb Jungr - Love Me Tender - Yorkshire Post

Jazz meets sophisticated cabaret in the singing of Barb Jungr, and on this wonderful, offbeat CD, it also meets the music of Elvis Presley. An alliance between jazz and Elvis is an unlikely one, but Jungr makes it work thanks to her unorthodox approach to familiar material and her gift for finding the emotional centre of a song. Stripped-down accompaniments, often just a piano and a gentle synthesiser backwash, help Jungr bring out the yearning at the heart of much of Presley's material. Are you Lonesome Tonight and Heartbreak Hotel are the distillation of loneliness in Jungr's readings, and her handlings of In the Ghetto and I Shall Be Released are movingly intense. Presley casts a long shadow over these songs, and it's testament to Jungr's individuality that she makes them sound as if they were written just for her.