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Waterloo Sunset: With her previous three albums, Barb Jungr had already proved herself one of Britain's most engrossing cabaret singers and one of the most adroit song interpreters in modern vocal pop, and Waterloo Sunset does nothing to alter or diminish that assessment. It does feel like a small step backward in terms of content after the all-Bob Dylan program of Every Grain of Sand, but it is certainly not a step down in quality and intelligence of performance. In fact, it is a return to the interpretive eclecticism of Bare, with its dramatic overhauls of pop tunes  intermingled with a few of Jungr's own delightful originals. It might even be thought of as a dressed-up version of that album, nowhere more evident than in the Ray Davies-penned title tune. Calum Malcolm again produces beautifully, employing a carnival of colors and textures; the entirely new backing band is crackerjack throughout, breezing through music hall, cocktail jazz, bossa nova, and Western swing with the equal panache.

Love Me Tender: You are listening to Elvis sing those songs more than you are listening to the songs he is singing. In a way, that makes Jungr's Love Me Tender all the more remarkable: you do not hear the King at all here except in faint echoes and traces, like barely remembered fairy tales you were told as a child as you were drifting off to sleep. In a sense, you are hearing these songs, many of them now considered classics, for the first time. Worlds of passion and pain, discovery and dislocation exist in these songs. The prevailing mood of the album is transformed into a mosaic, a complex map of one woman's fully lived life, from the dizzy, tender love letters of expectation to the lonesome heartbreak hotels that litter the highways of life, and all the attendant reveries, roadblocks, and realizations along the way, until she arrives at the gospel of her existence. And in that discovery, there is a certain gesture of sublime benevolence toward the listener. Love Me Tender is an autobiography of shared memory, but more than that it is a primer to how people refashion that memory to ascertain and navigate their own trajectories.

Just Like A Woman: Just Like A Woman takes its inspiration from the work of Jungr's forebear, the ultimate eclectic songstress Nina Simone, whose stature within contemporary music has only grown in the years since her death. To be sure, Jungr's natural-sounding folk-singer's voice sounds nothing like Simone's. Nor does does she model her arrangements on the original recordings of these tunes, most of which weren't even Simone's most celebrated. This allows Jungr even greater freedom with her characteristicaly novel arrangements and unexpected choices. So for starters, we are treated to a lively reggae version of "Just Like A Woman" as well as an effectively powerful medley juxtaposing "One Morning In May" and Steppenwolf's "The Pusher." Another musical highlight: a deliberative, hymn-like "Angel Of The Morning."

The Men I Love: When jazz, cabaret, and traditional pop artists speak of the Great American Songbook, they are usually referring to Tin Pan Alley treasures of the 1910s, '20s, '30s, and '40s. But worthwhile American popular music didn't end with Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Harry Warren, or the Gershwin siblings. Rock and R&B gave us subsequent generations of American musical poets, and British cabaret singer Barb Jungr obviously had that fact in mind when she called this album The Men I Love: The New American Songbook. Jungr's 2010 release is not a celebration of the Tin Pan Alley era, but rather, a tribute to songwriters (most of them American) who made their mark in the '60s, '70s, or '80s. Although cabaret has been a major focus for Jungr, The Men I Love doesn't really fall into that category. Stylistically, this album has more to do with folk-rock, soft rock, and adult alternative than it does with cabaret.

Walking In The Sun: You know those late English Summer days, right at the end of September, when there is a hint of autumn in the air, the last of the bees buzzing around the last of the poppy flowers and the warmth of the sun on your face, arms and back? That is what this album is like. A little disc of delights from start to finish. Barb Jungr has picked some of her most loved classic blues and gospel songs for this collection as well as songs by herself, Michael Parker Randy Newman, Jimmy Cliff and Carole King. She is backed by excellent musicians and arrangements, notably jazz pianist Jenny Carr and keyboardist and percussionist extraordinaire Jessica Lauren. If you have heard Barb Jungr before, you will not be disappointed by her latest project. If you haven't, listen t this and I can guarantee to you that you will adore this album and will be researching her back catalogue very soon. A good mix of gospel, blues, up-tempo jazz and a bit of folk that anyone who loves music will be smitten by. (Dylan Lancaster on Amazon)