by Brian Rill
The Journey – Bar Scott
Lucy Max Music 2014
ASCAP artist Bar Scott could easily become the Celine Dion of Central Colorado. Towering with vocal power that outshines any competitors, she is destined to sell out theater tickets at the box office. Her verbal style pierces into the heart, singing as if crooning directly from the soundtrack of a summer blockbuster film. Bar has a mesmerizing voice that can tremble and waver at critical moments, delivering the professional and captivating performances for which she is well known.
As a folk and blues singer with an erudition of classical ability, Bar is an incredibly alluring, well-rounded and naturally beautiful vocalist. Scott’s vibrato is comparable to an angelic choir performing a midnight mass in the Basilica. I did especially enjoy the fact that her operatic notes are 100 percent on-pitch. Bar Scott is a writer who descants music along the lines of a story. Her melodies tell true tales of love and surrender from the perspective of a strong female character. She suffers in a way that is relatable because her struggles are concerned with issues from our own lives.
The Journey is not without its jazzy style; the swing tune Letter Drop presents a cool and catchy side of Bar Scott’s songwriting. Most of her tunes are quiet and easygoing with the ballads lingering along a slow tempo. This can become tedious at times; however, her songwriting becomes more finely crafted eventually revealing an interesting and edgy twist. This fortuitous spin allows her work to wax more poignant and profound.
In the song I’m Not Perfect, she states, “You live in a small cocoon without any breathing room. You and your made up rules, for everyone else not you. No one is good enough, good enough for you.” In If There’s A Way, she sings, “I would try to build a shelter without a border or walls, where I would sit by a bridge and listen to the water fall.” Her song Roll Over Me concludes, “Riding your bike in the wind, without a rearview mirror. Roll over me, fill me up with things I’ll never see.”
Bar Scott’s tunes sound like an ancient and wonderful cantata filled with cheer and bright sunshine that drys rogue tears trapped inside the soul. A fire is alive within her spirit that moves the mightiest of mountains through the slightest voices of meadowlarks. Listeners will suddenly awaken to the esoteric mystery that is lying beneath our own lives. Bar opens the portal into a universe of mercy and awareness in the power of self. One might describe her main instrument as heartstrings, for she knows how to pluck them gently and with surgical precision.
This soaring, melodious voice will leave you catching your breath, coaxing you into holding on until the last second. The Journey, a touching and intimate portrait from a talented musician, was recorded in Westcliffe. It exhibits a pristine production quality often heard in Broadway musicals, as Dave Cook studios from New York mastered the final album. Sentiments conveying the compassionate ideal of hope are what give this work its charm. Invoking the feeling of a sunbeam’s return after the rain, The Journey is a long, soft-flowing sojourn alive with magic that blossoms into lavish gardens of song. Scott’s rhapsodies resound, rebuilding one’s trust in sunrise via gravitational tugs from the moon, urging the earth’s tide to coincide with the subtle body of our lives.
Bar’s emotional phrasing is sung precisely and flurried into a sequence of melody that perfectly articulates the feeling of suspense presented throughout The Journey. Peaceful, healing and revelatory, it’s a great easy listening opus that sets a standard for future singer-songwriters. Noble frustrations and angst are mitigated by the power of Bar Scott’s soothing words. She achieves a new height from within this tranquil and romantic aura that reaches us deeply and teaches that once we accept life as it is, our virtue becomes an arrow of longing; hand forged with hard won experience and cast into the sunset bearing a message of love.
To learn where to purchase this CD, visit www.barscott.com
Brian Rill is a troubadour, composer and poet.
