British country artist Jeannine Barry has captured media and fan attention since she released her single Bittersweet in 2016, reaching number three on the UK iTunes country chart. Since then she’s performed a headline show at London’s Thousand Island and recorded an Under The Apple Tree session for Bob Harris. This week she released her latest single, Sweet Spot, to coincide with C2C Festival, and opened the weekend at the Big Entrance Stage.
Barry began her set with Push Me, where she jammed out with her backing band. The heavy drums and guitar contrasted her soulful voice and set the template for the rest of the performance. She then sang a version of Bittersweet based on one she recorded in Nashville, where the passion and emotion in her vocal came through really strongly.
During her set Barry mixed songs from across her previous EPs, including the lonesome ‘heartbreak song’ Burning Bridges and the poppy Long Hot Summer. What brought the whole thing together was her smooth vocals, which had a lovely richness and warmth to them. I also liked that she seemed easily able to turn her hand to different styles, sounding just as good on the slower numbers as the more uptempo ones.
Barry finished her performance with two new songs, which were a complete contrast to one another. The folky Dreams highlighted the sweet, delicate aspect to her voice with its heartstring-tugging lyrics, whilst new single Sweet Spot had a carefree, sunny feel and gave Barry a chance to show her sassy side.
Overall Jeannine Barry was a good start to C2C Festival. She got the audience singing along and provided a good mixture of upbeat songs and ballads, as well as delivering solid vocals that could be powerful and angelic. She also promised that she’d mix her set up a little bit at each of her C2C performances, so if you’re around when she’s playing then it’s definitely worth catching her.
[brid video=”208322″ player=”531″ title=”Jeannine Barry Bittersweet (Official Video)”]
Set list: 1. Push Me 2. Bittersweet 3. Burning Bridges 4. Long Hot Summer 5. Dreams 6. Sweet Spot Performance date: 9th March 2018
