Barb Jungr - Love Me Tender - Record Collector

The King's Music as you've never heard it before.
If pigeonholed as a kind of British "answer" to Juliette greco, Jungr functions as a composer as well as an adroit interpreter of the songs of others. Nevertheless, as Greco did with Serge Gainsbourg, she has chosen to focus on one particular artist over an entire album. Response to the general result depends upon a number of variables - such as how precious you are about one such as she warping Presley so daringly to her own highly individual devices - and enunciating clearly lyrics that the Hillbilly Cat mumbles. She hasn't picked much that's especially stylised; no 12-bar Blue Suede Shoes or I Was The One with its cliched chord sequence - though there's a spooky Heartbreak Hotel that is more eye-stretching an overhaul than even John Cale's in 1974. Other highlights include a brace of Dylan numbers that Elvis recorded - plus a jagged Jungr original, Looking For Elvis - and, fellas, that's Mari Wilson, sometime Neadsen Queen of Soul, helping her out on backing vocals. * * * *