It's not exactly mainstream pop music, but Jill Barber sounds as if she's not in it for any superficial short-term gain.

Last year Barber decided it was time to move forward by looking back, opting for a classic-standards style along the lines of Connie Francis or Patsy Cline.

The end result is Chances, something Barber feels she took a few of with the new album.

"I think we went out on a little bit of a limb," Barber says.

"I wanted to make a very focused record that was specifically a classic, old, romantic type of record. And it's not the type of record I think is generally popular right now."

Barber, performing at Toronto's Mod Club tonight, says that lush, orchestral, retro sound was something she had been yearning to create for a few years now.

"I feel like with this record I figured out what kind of sound I've been looking for a number of years," she says.

"I think I've come into my own with this record.

"I've always been attracted to music that has a timeless quality and a lot of that old music has stood the test of time. I suppose I'm a fairly romantic person and I love that old classic, romantic sound. I find that it transports me to another place -- a dreamy, whimsical, romantic place."

While Chances sounds as if Barber has found that dreamy realm repeatedly, the musician says getting there wasn't exactly a piece of cake. She worked with longtime band mate and producer Les Cooper in getting the idea up and running.

"We've been very much on the same page, we co-wrote some songs together," Barber says. "He's a brilliant arranger and he has a great imagination for bringing songs to life. He's very tasteful and embellishes in all the right moments."

From there, the singer went into Toronto's Glen Gould Studio with a 10-piece orchestra to record the album live off the floor. Barber says it was a day she won't forget.

"That was quite magical," she recalls. "We tried to make it sound as authentic as possible. I mean it was a big day as you can imagine with the expense of it and just hoping it went well. Thankfully I worked with some very skilled people so I could sit back and watch and enjoy it while everybody else scrambled to make it perfect."

Another one of those very skilled people Barber mentions is singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith, someone Barber toured with on a few occasions and a person whose songwriting she admires.

"I guess another sort of chance I took with this record was I started co-writing for the first time," she says. "I thought, 'Well, if I'm going to be writing with another person I might as well go straight to the top.' I worked up the nerve to ask Ron if he would write with me and he was really receptive. We had a great experience."

Barber says she enjoys the title track as well as Take It Off Your Mind, the latter she describes as "stringed sexy love ballad" inspired in part by the Etta James signature At Last.

And although she's not sure if the next album will be another standards-style record, Barber doesn't structure her songwriting in terms of standards or pop songs.

"I wouldn't know the first thing about writing a pop song," Barber says. "I mean I like a catchy melody as much as the next person. I think a good song has to have a good melody and a strong, catchy hook whether it's a pop hook or not."