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There seems to be little in the way of middle ground where tribute albums are concerned. You can easily sift most into two piles, one marked ‘inspired', the other ‘karaoke'. Barb Jungr makes a stab at the former with The Men I Love, a collection of radical reinterpretations of her favourite songs by American men.

With an album title that speaks of comprehensive ambition, Jungr is asserting her claim on the broad songwriting traditions of the USA, something which could be considered something of a bold move for a woman from Rochdale popularly considered to be an authentic British chansonnier. How does someone steeped in the traditions of European cabaret with all its emotional effusiveness and anguished melodrama make sense of the earthier traditions of American songwriting? Quite interestingly, it seems. The touring stage show of The Men I Love received critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic with her pianist and production partner Simon Wallace. But does the drama of the live performance translate to the studio?

Beginning with a musically unrecognisable but lyrically familiar version of ‘Once In A Lifetime', the Talking Heads original is pulled apart, examined and reconfigured, slowing down the tempo and piling on the pathos. With a vocal far more tender than anything David Byrne ever produced and a piano that mimics the running water of the lyric, it's Elgar meets laidback jazz. Filled with benign acceptance, a hint of regret and the sense of a life running towards its latter years, it all oddly works, the sheer quality of the original songwriting being artfully exposed by Jungr and Wallace. The spoken "What have I done?" is delivered with delicious, breathy theatrics, the sense of personal realisation of the subject matter brought sharply into focus. It's a crying into in your wine glass moment.

If ‘Once In A Lifetime' was always a quality slice of the songwriter's art, rich in metaphor and artistically always more than just a three-minute pop song, the same cannot be said for The Monkees' ‘I'm A Believer'. Jungr slows it right down, losing the simple '60s pop optimism of the original in a melancholy moment. Whilst you cannot stylistically fault the arrangement or the vocal, the material really doesn't stand up to the treatment its given. The double-edged nature of this opening duo defines much of what follows. Moments of inspiration give way to oddly jarring sections where you scratch your head at the song choice. 'I Can't Get Used To Losing You' is spliced with the chorus of ‘Red Red Wine' making for an affecting cabaret number. ‘This Old Heart Of Mine' gets similarly co-opted into sharing song space with ‘Love Hurts', but with less success. Rather than making a coherent whole with the latter it sounds like a hamfisted segue based on the flimsiest of emotional similarities in the subject matter.

Far more sense-making is a beautiful version of Bread‘s oft-covered 1972 hit, ‘Everything I Own'. Using the same trick of slowing things down and offering the simplest of piano and cello accompaniment, the depth and range of Jungr's voice really comes to the fore. Intimate yet dramatic, it's lush enough to swim in and full of heart-tugging sincerity. The lyric suits an older vocalist, with the loss of years of shared life granting the material a greater poignancy. It's not about a besotted two-month affair between twentysomethings, but a decade-long life partnership coming to an rueful and regret-filled end.

Neither Glen Campbell's ‘Wichita Lineman' nor Bruce Springsteen's ‘The River' would immediately spring to mind as songs that would benefit from a Jungr makeover, but oddly both make for standout moments. ‘Wichita Lineman', always a beautiful song at the intersection of place and personal affections that often mark classic American songwriting, is subtly reinterpreted to pleasing effect as the album's concluder. "I need you more than want you," sings Jungr as a plaintive piano evokes middle America and railway tracks taking broken hearts to pastures new. ‘The River' is similarly earthy in sentiment, Jungr and Wallace affording it a cinematic folksiness. It's a storytelling lyric that helped Springsteen to cement his place in the Woody Guthrie-headed canon of blue-collar Americana, but here it's a tender torch song of the first order. The grit of the lyric as it details smalltown love and economic decline sounds neither hammy or overdone, and gives the whole album a greater sense of depth.

The Men I Love is an intriguing piece of work. At times it throws up sleeping butterflies in the pit of your stomach; at others it has your finger hovering over the fast forward button. The sum of its parts add up to something worthwhile but hard to place. Barb Jungr has dues-paid talent by the bucket load, and where The Men I Love fails it more often than not it is in the inherent weakness of the original material rather than the barely-there limitations of a stunning voice.