Cat Power
The Greatest
Matador Records
The raw, natural sound of Chan Marshall'svoice -- evocative of a taut violin bow bending under stress -- has sustained her career for over a decade with its ability to tap into the instinctual and conjure a flicker of something forgotten upon waking. It has kept us coming back, even through all those infamously obnoxious performances, and now brings us to the latest Cat Power album, which might well be, dare I say, her greatest.
Returning to Memphis, the site of 1996's recording of What Would the Community Think?, Marshall is accompanied by an all-star cast of venerable '70s soul musicians, such as Mabon Hodges and Steve Potts, who lend The Greatest a warm, seesawing country twang that's distinct and yet not overbearing. Whereas on her last release, You Are Free, Marshall's voice was at times mitigated by overproduction, dulled by too many layers of polish, The Greatest provides a full, organic sound without drowning out the divinity. Some songs are flush with sauntering violins, others flash with the sounds of sassy horns. A few tracks even find the band conspicuously absent, and one can faintly hear the walls of the room in which Marshall is singing.
Lyrically,
Marshall still has a lot in common with
Kurt Cobain. The severely-rendered "Hate" -- which sounds so quintessentially
Cat Power it could belong on any of her other records -- evokes an old
Nirvana b-side, intentionally or not, the stark title of which is used for the song's devastating last line, "I hate myself and want to die." The album's title-track floats like a butterfly into the mind of someone whose ambition has waned over time: "Once I wanted to be the greatest/Two fists of solid rock/With brains that could explain any feeling..." The young artist may have pined for the intellect to explain our feelings, but all we needed was someone with soul enough to pronounce them.
Matt Robison
last updated:
04/08/06
