By most accounts, Jill Barber’s latest release, Homemaker, is a “return to her folk roots.” The Juno-nominated songwriter has 11 studio albums under her belt, including 2018’s Metaphora and 2020’s Entre Nous, which play between pop and jazz genres.

For some, Homemaker heralds a cyclical return to Barber’s folk roots. In revisiting this genre, one that hasn’t been largely explored since her 2002 debut, A Note To Follow So, the album seems to mark a different kind of coming-of-age story: one that grapples with parenthood, domesticity, and the value we place on careers and caretaking.

The 10-song album was released on February 10 via Outside Music, marking a cathartic release from the grips of COVID-isolation and the reflection that happened therein.

“I felt like I had no choice but to try to reconcile my professional artistic life with my personal domestic life, because over the last few years, I haven’t been able to keep them separate,” Barber reveals to Loose Lips Mag, referencing the COVID-19 pandemic and its inevitable lifestyle changes.

“Suddenly my job vanished overnight, so I suddenly found myself 24/7 [homemaking] while my husband [worked].”

Stars – they’re just like us! Barber also found herself coping through the early days of isolation by taking up sourdough baking. 

“I had these two lives I was kind of balancing: one where I got to go on tour and take a break from my domestic life; and then I’d come home and leave that behind and I’d be in my family, my home life. Right now, [the two] smashed together and I had to reconcile it. Even publicly, I had to almost declare, ‘Okay, I’m not trying to moonlight as just an artist, I’m a mom and this is where this is my life is.’ I’m a woman aging in a business that loves youth.”

Many of Barber’s fans—myself included—find themselves in a similar position post-COVID: taking care of house and home (and the people therein) as the pandemic laid bare inequities in the careers of self-identified women. And, inevitably, a couple years older.

“So many women feel those questions and I did have a feeling that there were other people that would relate to what I would say,” Barber says of releasing this album full of vulnerable songs. 

“There isn’t a lot of popular music that even really addresses all this stuff. So much of the music we listen to doesn’t reflect the un-sexy, un-fun details of midlife and domesticity.”

Opening the album with “Instant Cash For Gold,” Barber croons “One of these days I’ll quit the road/ and trade these old songs in/ like instant cash for gold,” toying with the idea of what her life might look like sans a demanding music career.

“I think it sets the scene about value and the difference between what work in our society is valued monetarily and what work is not considered valuable, even though I think there is great value in the invisible work that homemakers do,” she says.

“With that song I also wanted to express, out loud, my disappointment that music has seemed to have lost a lot of value. [I thought about] the way people take their most valuable possessions to a pawn shop when they’re desperate. They need cash. All of us, in the capitalistic society that we’re all part of, are faced with that question [of selling our most valuable things] so that was just coming at it from the point of view of an artist and a musician who’s been professional for 20 years.”

Another song that seems to reconcile these two identities is “Beautiful Life,” showing more gratitude for the messy, imperfect worlds we create as our chosen family units—however that looks.

“A deeply meaningful life is the full spectrum, and that is what makes life beautiful. It just can’t be captured in text on social media, so I just wrote that song as a reminder to myself or anyone else who needs to hear it,” the singer muses.

But perhaps most connecting of all is its title track, which reaches out an empathetic hand to those listening.

“If all you wanna do is run/ I won’t tell anyone/ Your secret fantasy/ If all you wanna do is cry/ I won’t even ask why/ I’ll just hold the box of tissues for you/ Homemaker, it’s okay/ If today, the only thing you make/ Is you make it through the day,” Barber sings.

Barber played the track for an intimate gathering of friends—many of whom are in the same position in life—during a sort-of album release party back in February.

“I did actually get to play that song to a room full of my friends, who, like me, are ‘Homemakers.’ I say that not necessarily as parents although that’s the obvious, most immediate [demographic you think of], I’m speaking of people that make a home for other people… I think when I wrote that song, it’s kind of speaking to myself and anyone else like me.”

As for the charge that Barber’s made a return to folk? It’s not something she entirely accepts.

“In some ways I’ve never really left my folk roots. The roots have remained but the landscape and the leaves have gone in different directions. I’ve certainly toyed and experimented and had fun producing albums that lean more heavily into jazz or pop or whatever fun production I’ve played with. I’ve always been writing songs and with this [album], I deliberately wanted to keep it kind of bare and raw and not muddy the message.”

In fact, creative control of this album was important to the Canadian music veteran, seeing her in a producing role (alongside co-producer Erik Neilsen) for the first time in her 20-year tenure.

“These songs are so damn personal, and such a deep reflection of my soul, that I felt an almost maternal instinct to both protect them—and produce them for myself. I really feel like I stepped into my own power as a producer on this record.”

In many ways, Homemaker sees Jill Barber not-so-much return to her beginnings, but lay out the trajectory and growth of her career—all while her fans are growing up with her.

Jill Barber plays The York Theatre on April 15 in Vancouver. Tickets here.

Find more of her Canadian tour dates at jillbarber.com/shows, from Whitehorse to Ottawa and beyond.