CD Review: Shelter From the Storm, Barb Jungr (Linn Records, 2016)

Barb Jungr’s rich and vibrant new album Shelter From the Storm follows directly in the footsteps of her last, 2014’s highly acclaimed Hard Rain, by taking a Bob Dylan song for its title; in fact, it’s the latest in a series of Jungr albums to pay homage to her favourite songwriter in this way. (2002’s Every Grain of Sand and 2011’s Man in the Long Back Coat, both comprised entirely of Dylan material, and 2008’s Just Like A Woman, dedicated to the repertoire of Nina Simone, are the others.)

However, Jungr’s new release really sets out its stall via its subtitle: “Songs of Hope for Troubled Times.” “[T]his material is all about hope – and dreams – we need so much more of them now,” Jungr explains in the liner notes.  As such, the looser, more relaxed and upbeat Shelter From the Storm is a rather different proposition to Hard Rain which combined “political and philosophical” songs by Dylan and Leonard Cohen to brilliantly intense effect. The contrasting attitude is evident in the albums’ art work aesthetics: where Hard Rain pictured a pensive, sultry-looking Jungr set against a stark black background, Shelter From the Storm’s cover (photographed by Steve Ullathorne) finds the singer radiant and beaming in a verdant garden, eyes aloft and clearly anticipating that something a whole lot more positive than a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.  

Recorded during a sweltering July at Sear Sound studio in New York, Shelter From the Storm is very much a transatlantic project, and finds Jungr teaming up with some exciting new collaborators. This time, she’s joined by the award-winning Laurence Hobgood on piano and keys, Michael Olatuja on double bass and Wilson Torres on percussion. The quartet form a strong and sympathetic unit, as they tackle material that encompasses work by Jungr’s cherished ’60s and ’70s singer-songwriter icons, a pair of musical theatre classics, and several superb new compositions, too.

Each track is given its own highly distinctive identity, yet the album feels entirely cohesive, with Hobgood’s fresh, supple and sometimes boldly idiosyncratic arrangements often stretching the songs into delectable jazz jams. The vibe is spare yet textured; all the material, however familiar, feels new-minted; and there are fresh elements to notice with every play of the disc.

The live arena is, of course, Jungr’s natural habit, the place where, in an intimate cabaret setting, all aspects of her artistry combine through masterful vocal delivery, distinctive gestures and expressions, story-telling, and audience interaction. However, while Jungr’s power as a performer  may be strongly linked to the experience of seeing her live and “in motion”, Shelter From the Storm succeeds in doing justice to her multifaceted musicianship through vocals alone.

That’s nowhere more apparent than on the title track itself, a version which plays with metre and tempo to thrilling effect in order to dynamically capture the shifting emotions and responses of the narrator. Jungr’s vocals move compellingly from stridency to delicacy, the urgent to the languorous, declaiming and cooing in perfect harmony with Hobgood’s protean piano playing.

Cohen’s “Sisters of Mercy” is treated almost as creatively, the song benefiting from a quirky “stop/start” rhythm and closing with Jungr’s gracious repetition of the lyric “We weren’t lovers like that”. A shimmering and funky re-working of “Woodstock” is another highlight, leading one to hope that Jungr will turn her attention to a full programme of Joni Mitchell material one of these days. And there’s no better evidence of Jungr’s elegant iconoclasm than in her seamlessly popping the verses of Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” into a wonderful, taut and dramatic take on Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.”

The versions of South Pacific’s “Bali Hai” (which opens the album)  and of West Side Story’s “Something’s Coming” are both strong, and perfectly in keeping with the record's themes, but if Jungr’s excursions into musical theatre are a bit less revelatory for me, it’s perhaps because she’s so brilliant at refocusing others’ songs as stories that there’s a little less room for manoeuvre with compositions that already have built-in associations in the pre-existing narrative of a show. 

Jungr’s own compositions, developed in collaboration with Hobgood, are all gleaming gems, though. (I keep hoping that the amazing “Last Orders”, written with Simon Wallace, will turn up on an album sometime but she seems content to leave that as a treat for concert-attendees only.)  The elegant “Stars Lazy But Shining” joins her brilliant “Beautiful Life” as a further celebration of nature’s joys and the pleasures derived from close attention to everyday experience. “Venus Rising” is even better, building from evocative, carefully chosen images to a jubilant finale. And “Hymn to Nina”, a further homage to Simone, is perfectly disarming in its open-hearted candour. “I sing to a heroine of mine,” Jungr intones against Hobgood’s delicate piano. The simple scene-setting detail of “driving from Brighton, rain on my windscreen” beautifully grounds the tribute in the everyday, as Jung celebrates Simone for “bringing soul and song to everything,” and tenderly repeats her name as an incantation at the song's close.   

Which brings us to the album’s closer. (Well, kind of: the download version of the album also includes excellent versions of Springsteen’s “Long Walk Home” and Bacharach’s “What the World Needs Now is Love” as bonus tracks.) Recording David Bowie’s “Life on Mars?” in New York back in July, Jungr could hardly have known that the track would be released a mere month after Bowie’s death. The track’s inclusion here – in a superb arrangement that brings a beguiling fairground quality to the piece and also incorporates lyrics from “Space Oddity” into the song’s folds – is extremely poignant. The song inescapably links back to “Hymn to Nina” in this context, with its reference to “Wild is the Wind”, a composition covered by both Simone and Bowie.  “In the wild wind I hear you calling…”  Jungr sings to Nina, the sentiment extending to Bowie too. “You were here then you were gone/Your word lives on…”

Through her passionate, sensitive and intelligent reinterpretations, Jungr continues to ensure that the work of many artists “lives on” in vibrant and re-energised ways. Building connections across material, making old songs new again, “bringing soul and song to everything,” Shelter From the Storm stands as further testament to Jungr's ever-evolving powers as a performer. Be sure to catch her and Hobgood when they tour the album in the UK in March and April, and in the US in May.     

Shelter from the Storm  is released on Linn Records on February 19th and can be ordered here.  Tour dates here. 

Film Review: Youth (dir. Sorrentino, 2015)

Paolo Sorrentino's rather good Youth is in UK cinemas from Friday. You can read my review from Cannes 2015 here. 

Theatre Review: The Rolling Stone (Orange Tree)

Fiston Barek and Faith Alabi in The Rolling Stone (Photo: Manuel Harlan)

Winner of the 2013 Bruntwood Prize Judges Award, Chris Urch’s The Rolling Stone debuted last year at Manchester’s Royal Exchange, where the production was cross-cast with a new version of Anna Karenina. An exploration of gay desire in the repressive context of contemporary Uganda, Urch’s play gained mostly favourable responses, though some critics suggested that Ellen McDougall’s production would have benefited from a smaller space.

It gets it here. Transferred to the Orange Tree, as the first production in Paul Miller’s second year as Artistic Director, The Rolling Stone reveals itself, in the right-there intimacy of this auditorium, to be a nuanced, thought-provoking and – finally – blazingly intense piece that demonstrates an Ibsen-esque attention to the problematic intersection of public and private lives.

The title alludes to a Ugandan newspaper, a scurrilous rag which, in 2010, began publishing pictures of homosexuals and urging people to "out" any such deviants who are believed to be threatening the moral life of the nation. (The publications led to arrests, assaults and murders.) Church elder Mama (Jo Martin) sees the scare as the opportunity for some crowd-pleasing (and lucrative) fire-and-brimstone preaching on the part of the newly installed pastor Joe (Sule Rimi). What she – and Joe – are unaware of is that Joe’s brother Dembe (Fiston Barek) is gay, and involved in a relationship with Sam (Julian Moore-Cook), a doctor of Ugandan and Northern Irish parentage.  

Scooping a Bruntwood Prize hasn’t always been a firm guarantee of a play’s quality, but The Rolling Stone certainly proves its worth. While some of the banter between Dembe and Sam feels a little bit calculated in striving for crowd-pleasing comic effects, Urch’s writing is adroit where it counts, with the protagonists' attitudes to religion and sexuality conveyed through rich and robust language and cliché-defying characterisation. 

The play is undoubtedly a melodrama in terms of its construction. But it shows how impactful that form can be when approached with truth and sensibility, the drama building to a shattering finale that’s worthy of Arthur Miller at his finest. (In its concern with whistle-blowing and its presentation of the "outing" as a witch-hunt motivated in part by personal score-settling, Miller’s The Crucible is an evident intertext here.)  

 Fiston Barek and Sule Rimi in The Rolling Stone (Photo Manuel Harlan)

McDougall delivered a rather wonky production of The Glass Menagerie last year but shows total assurance in this venture. Staged simply and prop-free, with slightly overlapping scenes, and punctuated by stirring singing of spirituals, the production has pace and rhythm, and is boosted by terrific, heart-grabbing performances.

Jo Martin’s superb Mama blends manipulation and maternal concern to compelling effect, locating a strangely valiant and vulnerable core at the heart of a character whose actions and rhetoric are often reprehensible. Charismatic Sule Rimi brings heat to Joe’s preaching, implicating the audience as his congregation. Fiston Barek insightfully conveys Dembe’s oscillations between self-denial and self-belief. And Faith Omole and Faith Alabi maximise their opportunities as Dembe’s sister Wummie and his proposed paramour Naome, the former forced to make her own sacrifice, the latter seeking refuge in silence.

As potent as the play’s elements of social critique undoubtedly are, The Rolling Stone is generous and mature in its avoidance of finger-pointing, and in its refusal to demonise any of its own characters. The torn-from-the-headlines element charges the drama with an electric current of urgency. But Urch’s play finally transcends mere topicality, expanding into a more universal exploration of the complexities of family, loyalty and love. Not to be missed.  

Booking until 20^th February. Further details here. 

Theatre Review: wonder.land (National Theatre)

My review of Damon Albarn and Moira Buffini's musical wonder.land at the National Theatre is up at PopMatters. You can read it here.  

Review of 2015: Cinema - 15 Favourite Films

While only a handful of theatre productions (Everyman, Play Mas, Pig Girl, French Without Tears, Now This is Not the End) made an impression on me this year, 2015 turned out to be a fairly strong year for cinema, overall. Sure, UK distribution remains in a pretty sorry state, Hollywood gets lazier and more risk-averse … yet, against all odds, filmmakers keep producing gems: mostly, it must be said, in languages other than English.

I was very happy to attend  Cannes for the first time this year, even if the Festival offered a solid rather than a truly spectacular line-up on this occasion. (You can read my full coverage here). Quality control was considerably  more sustained at the emotional roller-coaster that was this year's unforgettable Gdynia Film Festival, where much of the most creative and rewarding work I saw all year was screened.  

That being said, this year's Kinoteka was stronger on classics than new films, but the modest Cinema Made in Italy season at least gave Londoners their only chance to catch Ermanno Olmi’s haunting WWI miniature, Greenery Will Bloom Again (Torneranno i prati). London Film Festival itself boasted a pretty strong line-up that cherry-picked the best offerings of other major fests and included some premieres of its own. Having heralded 2015 as “the year of the strong woman” (a categorisation I address a little bit in my piece on the Opening Night film Suffragette), the LFF made sure to award its top prize to a female director on this occasion. Yet the choice - Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Chevalier, a fitfully amusing yet ultimately rather thin satire on male competitiveness featuring no women in the cast - seemed to tell its own story: namely that, as in the literary sphere, awards these days are more likely to go to female artists who make men the protagonists of their work.

A few films that coulda been contenders in my own 'Top 15' missed out for one reason or another. Inside Out was undoubtedly the screening with the best bonhomie at Cannes, and it’s one I look back on fondly. But the more problematic aspects of the movie – most cogently outlined by Sophie Mayer in her characteristically incisive piece on the film – weren’t quite mitigated for me by its surface cleverness. John Crowley’s hugely likeable Brooklyn stayed sensitive and strong for most of its duration but was marred by a finale that I seem to be alone in finding rushed, contrived and fake. By contrast, Todd Haynes’s fawned-over Carol worked its way to a great ending, had the year’s best score, and moments of exquisite beauty, yet the softening and simplifying of the central relationship made the film emotionally unsatisfying and rather frustrating in the last analysis. On the other hand, I was very pleased to see Tom Browne’s brilliant debut film Radiator (which came out in the UK in the same week as Carol) finally getting a much-deserved cinema release. Browne’s film made my list last year. Without further ado, here’s this year’s set.

Sunset Song (dir. Terence Davies)

Following his rather botched adaptation of The Deep Blue Sea, it was especially pleasing to find Terence Davies back on peak form once again here, with a spell-binding take on Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s classic that entered deeply into the soul of the novel and emerged as pure cinema. Hypnotic, deeply affecting and crowned by a superb performance by Agyness Deyn,  Sunset Song places the responsive viewer in what Roger Ebert once described as a “film reverie”, captivating with the rhythm of its images and the music of its voices, which prove pretty much impossible to shake off. 

11 Minutes (dir. Jerzy Skolimowski) 

Setting a diverse group of characters in motion in contemporary Warsaw, and charting their progress over the same 11 minutes of the day, Skolimowski‘s latest is a sensational city symphony that's equally alert to the quotidian and the ineffable. A jittery, poetic mosaic of urban experience, it's at once a warning, a wake-up call, and one helluva wild ride. Full review here.

Mountains May Depart (dir. Jia Zhangke)

Brilliantly book-ended by Pet Shop Boys' version of “Go West,” Jia’s decades-spanning drama about Chinese diasporic experience opens on the cusp of the millennium and proceeds to unfold with the grace and subtle, cumulative power of a great novel, spinning out of a Fenyang love triangle an absorbing exploration of continuity and change, what’s recuperable  and what’s forever lost. Also recommended: Jia Zhangke: A Guy From Fenyang, an insightful and affectionate portrait of the filmmaker directed by Walter Salles. Full review here.

James White (dir. Josh Mond)

The latest film from the Borderline collective (the group comprising NYU alums Josh Mond, Antonio Campos and Sean Durkin) again gives us hope for serious-minded American independent cinema, after all. As tightly coiled as Mountains May Depart is beautifully open and expansive, James White also places a mother/son relationship at its centre. But here that relationship is defined by proximity rather than distance, the film focusing on an NYC slacker (Christopher Abbott) caring for his dying mom (Cynthia Nixon).  A tenderer, kinder cousin to Campos’s great Simon Killer, James White finally narrows down to an intense duet for Abbott and Nixon that’s performed with absolute bravery, and features some of the year’s finest screen-writing, to boot. Bravo (again) Borderline Boys. Full review here.

Mediterranea (dir. Jonas Carpignano) 

Suggesting De Sica combined with Claire Denis, Carpignano made his  portrait of two African migrants attempting to adjust to their new life in Italy an atmospheric and deeply moving humanist drama. The subject matter could scarcely have been more timely yet, in its specificity, its depth and its bracing compassion, Mediterranea goes way beyond what a newspaper report might give us. Full review here.

Inherent Vice (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

Altman attitudes. 70s spirit. Stoner poetry. The twistiest, most baffling of plots. Paul and Pynchon made a great, gonzo pairing, even if Owen Jones and quite a lot of other people didn't think so, the fools. Best P.T.A since Magnolia.

A Bigger Splash (dir. Luca Guadagnino)

Also reflecting in a surprising way upon the migrant crisis, Luca Guadagnino turned his Pantelleria-set reworking of Jacques Deray and Jean-Claude Carrière’s 1969 La Piscine into a stylish and rather delicious take on the moral dubiousness of glamorous idling foreigners, with Tilda Swinton as a recuperating rock star, Matthias Schoenaerts as her lover, and Ralph Fiennes and Dakota Johnson as the disruptive interlopers to their idyll. Blissfully entertaining, not without some political bite, and sexy as hell, the film boasts an unmissably outrageous, hilarious (and revealing...) performance from Fiennes as both the tale’s supreme hedonist and its moral conscience. Full review here.

Moje córki krowy (These Daughters of Mine) (dir. Kinga Dębska)
The overwhelming response at the end of the Musical Theatre screening of this was one of my favourite "audience moments" in 2015. Moje córki krowy won over a whole lot of us at Gdynia with its perceptive, tart yet generous and often laugh-out-loud funny take on family relations, and its brilliant performances. Everything that Mia Madre wasn't, basically. Full review here. 

Regarding Susan Sontag (dir. Nancy D Kates)

Avoiding the traps of either hagiography or hatchet job, Kates produced a rich, absorbing (and surprisingly funny) portrait of one of the greatest of American intellectuals that did justice both to the complexity of its subject’s personality, and to her epoch-defining work. The inclusion of Sontag-referencing clips from Bull Durham and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (yeah!) are but one indication that Kates knows exactly what she’s doing here. Best bit: a clip from this spectacularly awkward interview that captures Sontag at her sharpest, most contrarian and uningratiating best. 

Córki Dancingu (The Lure) (dir. Agnieszka Smoczyńska)

“Two mermaids walk into a Warsaw nightclub…” A deserved winner of the Best Debut prize at this year’s Gdynia, Agnieszka Smoczyńska's ingenious genre-hopper combines dreamy beauty, gory body horror, broad humour  and some great musical sequences to create a highly distinctive variant on the Hans Christian Andersen story  that ends up pretty far from Disney territory. Deserves to be widely seen in 2016. Full review here.

They Will Have To Kill Us First: Malian Music in Exile (dir. Johanna Schwartz)

As direct as Timbuktu was fragmentary and impressionistic, Schwartz’s superb documentary  about the 2012 Islamic Jihadist takeover in Northern Mali conveyed righteous anger at  the oppressions inflicted, as it celebrated  the resilience of the artists affected.   

An (dir. Naomi Kawase)

So unfashionably earnest that it ends up feeling rather radical, Kawase’s latest is the oh so lovely account of the bonds  forged between three lonely souls; a  dorayaki seller, a teenage customer  and the elderly woman who comes to his stall in search of work. A restorative delight, An also boasts a darker thematic undercurrent involving state-sanctioned  prejudice that got carelessly overlooked by those who jumped to dismiss the film as way too sweet. Full review here. 

.    

Love is Strange (dir. Ira Sachs)

Like An, Love is Strange was also notable for its tenderness, Sachs delivering a wry and infinitely  touching portrait of a temporary separation enforced upon a couple (excellent Alfred Molina and John Lithgow) that was every bit as delicate as the Chopin featured on the soundtrack. Full review here.    

Body/Ciało (dir. Małgorzata Szumowska)

Szumowska’s most accomplished and best sustained work to date combines elements of detective drama, supernatural enquiry and deadpan black comedy, as it focuses on a widowed prosecutor, his anorexic teenage daughter, and the latter’s therapist, a spiritualist who believes that the family's matriarch is trying to make contact from beyond the grave. Terrific performances from veteran Janusz Gajos, newcomer Justyna Suwała and the ever-brilliant Maja Ostaszewska, and Szumowska’s quirky touches (“Śmierć w bikini”!) make this reason/faith face-off an idiosyncratic and appropriately haunting experience. Full review here and read my interview with Szumowska about the movie here. 

The Pearl Button (dir. Patricio Guzmán)
From oceanic mysteries to the brutality of the Pinochet regime via the fate of Patagonia’s indigenous tribes: no one does docs like Guzmán does docs. In his brilliant latest, the director once more transforms our ideas of nature, of politics, of history, of existence itself. (And all in 80 minutes.)  

Honourable Mentions: Greenery Will Bloom Again, Brooklyn,  Louder Than Bombs, Force Majeure, Something Better to Come, Son of Saul,  Evolution, My Nazi Legacy, Youth, Baby Bump, Carol, Cemetery of Splendour, Panie Dulskie, My Love Don’t Cross That River, The Lobster (first half only).   

Disappointments, duds: Desierto, The Daughter, The Falling, Manglehorn  

Still Unseen: 45 Years, It Follows, Arabian Nights, The Forbidden Room, Phoenix 

Review of 2015: Music - 10 Favourite Albums

2015 was a year when a lot of my most memorable music experiences happened live: whether it was Barb Jungr’s soul-shakingly great reinventions of material by Cohen and Dylan, The Beatles  and others, Sufjan Stevens turning the delicate autobiographical intimacies of Carrie & Lowell into  a staggering rock spectacle, or Carmen Consoli  inspiring awe-inducing expressions of Italian adoration at her show as part of David Byrne’s Meltdown. These experiences live only in memory now, and are, perhaps, all the more potent for that. Below, though, is a list of the motley crew of albums that I listened to and loved the most this year, along with links to a few choice tracks from each.

 The Light Princess, Original Cast Recording

"My Own Land", "Queen Material", "No H20" 

The Trackless Woods, Iris DeMent

"From the Oriental Notebook", "Listening to Singing", "Like A White Stone"

Skeleton Crew, Madisen Ward and the Mama Bear

"Silent Movies", "Live By The Water", "Modern Day Mystery"

Music Complete, New Order

"Academic", "Tutti Frutti", "Plastic" 

Carrie & Lowell, Sufjan Stevens

           "Drawn to the Blood", "Death With Dignity", "The Only Thing"

The Rose of Roscrae, Tom Russell

"The Last Running," "Ain't No More Cane on the Brazos", "The Rose of Roscrae"  

Joy of Living: A Tribute to Ewan MacColl, Various Artists

"Jamie Foyers", "Schooldays Over", "The Terror Time"

The Other Side of Desire, Rickie Lee Jones

"Jimmy Choos", "Infinity", "Blinded By The Hunt"

Honeymoon, Lana Del Rey

"Freak", "Music To Watch Boys To", "Salvatore"

Leonard Cohen: Zaśpiewany, Various Artists

"Lawina",  "Jestem Twój",   "Tańcz mnie po miłości kres"

Bonus: the Made in Dagenham OCR loses a few points for only being available as a download. But I have such affection for David Arnold and Richard Thomas's witty, wonky, silly, smart score that leaving it off the list for that reason seems a bit churlish. These songs make me really happy, especially the sublime (Toby Keith-inspired...?) account of US self-image that is "This is America". (Take a listen, below.) A list book-ended by the scores of musicals that should still be on, in other words ... Merry Christmas!   

"Busy Woman", "This is America", "Everybody Out", "Ideal World"

Concert Review: Barb Jungr’s Festive Feelings, Crazy Coqs, 12 December 2015

James Stewart’s George Bailey memorably discovered that “It’s a wonderful life” in Frank Capra’s enduring classic, a film described by Sally Potter as now seeming “positively Marxist in its values.” Although not alluding to the film directly, by putting “Beautiful Life” in their “Festive Feelings” Christmas show, Barb Jungr, Peter Horsfall  and Jenny Carr seemed to make a nod in the direction of Capra’s title.

Written by Jungr and Adrian York, the jazzy, supple “Beautiful Life” came a few songs into the trio’s set at Soho’s great Crazy Coqs club on Saturday night. It was one of those moments – there are usually a number of them in Jungr’s shows – when you feel a shift in the energy of the room: the experience of a deep collective catharsis. At this time of mad consumerism, over-spending, and great waste, Jungr made the song itself into a little anti-capitalist beacon: a vivid celebration of nature’s joys, of what’s free, available and already there to be shared, if we’re open and awake enough to really experience it.  

Always among the most infectiously ebullient and inclusive of performers, Jungr was in especially buoyant mood at Saturday night’s show, clearly relishing the interplay with the packed crowd, and with Carr and Horsfall, the former accompanying her on piano, the latter on trumpet.  Making a few concessions to expected material  via delightfully wry takes on “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”  and “Winter Wonderland”, the set-list was otherwise as inventive as you’d expect - and as delectable - gently expanding the boundaries of what’s classified as Christmas music.

True, some of the featured songs have been presented by Jungr in other contexts. For example, Joni Mitchell's “River” (“this needs a gospel choir – and you’re it”, Jungr reminded us, inspiring the first of several joyous singalongs) formed part of her Stockport to Memphis album and “To Love Somebody” (here rescued from its placing in ITV3's 2015 Christmas ad) was included in her Nina Simone-dedicated shows. 

But these inclusions all emerged new-minted here, with subtle rearrangements, Horsfall’s great trumpet-playing, and some gorgeously quirky, gospel-influenced three-part harmonies supplying wonderful fresh textures.  Moreover, by incorporating material by Mitchell, Dylan and The Beatles (subject of her latest collaboration with John McDaniel), the show emerged as not merely a novelty item but rather as all-of-a-piece with Jungr’s other musical explorations.

As always, Jungr evoked and explored a wide range of human experience in “Festive Feelings”, treating each song as an encapsulated, highly emotional story. No nuance was neglected, no meaning skated over (pardon the pun).The show opened with “Ring Them Bells”, a gem drawn from her beloved Bob’s great 1989 album Oh Mercy, and progressed through a hilariously hammy and spiky “Fairytale of New York” to an exquisite, lusciously deep-toned “Waterloo Sunset.”

An unexpected take on Les Paul and  Mary Ford’s “Vaya con Dios” transported us down Mexico way (“I don’t know about you, but at Christmas I always think about Mexico…” Jungr deadpanned, cheekily justifying the song’s inclusion in the set),  while Horsfall got retro with lovely, warm leads on “Moonlight in Vermont” and “The Christmas Song”. “Peace in the Valley” found Jungr in thrilling gospel mode, hot-wired to the song’s images of transcendence and transformation and beautifully backed by Carr and Horsfall's harmonies. There was even a pleasing nod to Jungr’s years in The Three Courgettes (the group she formed in the '70s with Michael Parker and Jerry Kreeger) via the (inadvertently) double-entendre-strewn “Christmas is Coming.” Finest of all perhaps was “Here Comes the Sun,” which moved gloriously from tentatively-expressed hopefulness to ecstatic affirmation as it welcomed a redemptive thaw.   

From Vermont to Mexico, New York to Waterloo we travelled, then, and the journey made “Festive Feelings” the most delightful of seasonal pick-me-ups. I went into the show at the end of a slightly grim day that had left me a bit dismayed by various factors: London’s grubbiness, the consumerist crush, other people’s demands or distancing. I emerged elated, reminded -  as Jungr’s shows, in their richness and radical humanity, are wont to remind us -  of the many ways in which it’s a beautiful life, after all.    
  

"Festive Feelings" has finished at Crazy Coqs, but you can see the show at Altrincham and at Newbury later this week. Details here.