Barb Jungr is one of those artists whose albums tend to be filed under "jazz" because it's hard to figure out where else they might belong.
She is also sometimes referred to as a cabaret or nightclub singer, and called "the UK's answer to Edith Piaf", although those descriptions don't do her justice.
Jungr is well known for her interpretations of Bob Dylan's songs, having released two albums devoted exclusively to them, but she also interprets other songwriters including Jacques Brel, Joni Mitchell, Ray Davies and Richard Thompson; she also writes herself.
Dylan keeps drawing her back though. Her first full-length collection of his songs, Every Grain of Sand, came out on Linn Records in 2002. She recorded more on subsequent albums, which Linn collected, along with four newly recorded arrangements on 2011's Man in the Long Black Cloak. She has returned to the same well for half of the songs on her latest album, Hard Rain, on Kristalyn Records.
Jungr had sung Leonard Cohen songs in concert for years, but not recorded them. She decided Cohen and Dylan could stand together in her new album. "They're all songs of philosophy and politics. [Dylan and Cohen] both have a certain core of political awareness, and they've written very truthfully and with a certain laser-like precision about who we are as people."
She wanted to sing their "tougher songs", Jungr says. "There was somehow a through thread to them - that the world they described, and the actions they rejected and celebrated were of as much importance today as the day those songs were penned."
Jungr has gone with simple instrumentation, with long-time collaborator and pianist Simon Wallace producing and handling the keyboards. Neville Malcolm and Steve Watts play bass, Richard Olatunde Baker and Gary Hammond contribute percussion, and Clive Bell plays shakuhachi.